


Avatar: The Next Chapter

by forgottenkeyboard



Category: Avatar (TV), Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Multi, OCs - Freeform, enjoy, kind of inventing a new era so had to come up with my own, sorry bout it, there will be quite a few, this is so entirely from my own head
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-30 14:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10878312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgottenkeyboard/pseuds/forgottenkeyboard
Summary: Korra's reconnection with Raava means that the Avatar cycle is sure to continue, but without her previous connection to a thousand lifetimes of avatars. She is the first in a new line. And as certain as the sun rising in the east, her time too must come... unfortunately, sooner than expected.So Raava turns to the Earth kingdom, and a new life.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> wow what am i doing
> 
> this all started when i thought 'hey i wish we had the story of the next avatar i think an earthbender's story would be cool' and then i wrote this so here it is
> 
> i hope somebody enjoys this but also this is so aggressively My Vision so who knows? i figured i'd put it out there. don't expect this to be updated or even finished in a timely manner. it's still developing in my head.

**83rd Year Since the Great War**

In a small town south of Ba Sing Se, there arose a cacophony of screams as the terrified villagers watched the night sky above them. They had anticipated absolute death and destruction when a meteorite was predicted to land squarely on their doorsteps. 

Now, they watched at first in awe and then in horror as the glowing figure of their savior - Avatar Korra - plummeted out of the sky. She had, with the aid of the avatar state, batted the space rock aside and directed it into a nearby lake, which proceeded to flood its surroundings. The wave of water mercifully slowed to a foot high tide of mud before it hit the town, and nobody minded the mess: soggy floors were much preferred to a smoking crater. 

Before anyone could cheer, however, the avatar had lost her glow and begun to fall, directly into the steaming, turbulent lake. A resident of the town who happened to be a waterbender sprinted to the shore along with other concerned citizens, and with great effort manipulated the tide into pulling the young woman ashore. The people of the town rushed forward all at once to help her when she started to cough up water.

"Avatar Korra!" the waterbender gasped, his eyes wide. "Are you alright?"

She cracked open a single blue eye. 'No' would have been pretty funny to reply, she thought, but already the effort needed to even appreciate her own sense of humor was too much. Briefly Korra contemplated trying to articulate a message to her would-be savior, some wise phrase she would be remembered by, but all coherent thoughts escaped her. The battered woman settled for a deep sigh and a quiet, raspy, "Thank you," to the poor young man who had tried to save her, and let the black tide of exhaustion sweep over her and drag her under. 

_I’m sorry, Raava. I wanted more time._

The Light Spirit recalled the last words of her very first avatar, and gave Korra the mental version of a gentle hug. _Do not be sorry. You have done more for this world in one lifetime than many avatars before you. Go in peace, Korra._

The Avatar smiled. _Thank you._

Korra drew her last breath under the light of the stars, oblivious to the anguished sobs of the strangers she had saved all around her. 

Meanwhile, Raava was reluctant to leave her. They had accomplished so much together, been through so much together. But the cycle must continue. So the Spirit of Light gently guided Korra's soul into the sky, then turned her attention back to the earth - truly to the earth. It was time to find her next avatar. 

\--

On the other side of the Earth Kingdom, on the northwestern edge where the sea divides it from the Fire Nation and the Northern Watertribe, a baby drew its first breath... and wailed. 

The infant had no inkling of the tragedy that had just befallen a young woman on the other side of the world. She didn't care. All she knew was that it was suddenly cold, and she didn't like this change of scenery at all. 

Then a peculiar thing happened. The baby felt warm all of a sudden, but from the inside. And the faintest whisper of a voice seemed to echo in her head: "Hello. My name is Raava. I look forward to our life together."

Of course, the baby didn't understand any of that, nor did she really care. She just knew she was not so cold anymore, and now she was being bundled into someone's embrace - someone she recognized instinctively as the woman who had birthed her. 

"She's beautiful," the new mother sobbed, overwhelmed by the fading pain of childbirth and the rush of love she felt for this tiny infant. 

The healer by her side smiled softly, rubbing the woman's arm. She was the only other one in the room. There was no father in the room, nor in the picture - no deep voice to echo the remark about a beautiful baby daughter. "Have you thought of a name?" the healer asked gently. 

The mother wiped her tears and sniffled, "Tama. My little Tama."

Tama shifted in her mothers arms and gurgled once before falling asleep. She did not know that at this moment, her dear friends from another lifetime were receiving the worst phone calls in their lives. She did not know that her last body was being gently prepared for one last journey to the South Pole. 

And she had no idea how complicated her future was about to become.


	2. Tama Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At nine years old, Tama doesn't know much, but she does know that she's lonely.

**92nd Year Since the Great War**

The marketplace was bustling with activity. It was just after noon on a fine summer’s day, and even the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se seemed to be in a collective good mood. Traders shouted, vendors pushed small carts of goods around, and on the street corner a trio of musicians played a lively tune. The poverty in the Lower Ring was not quite as bad as it had been under their last Queen, but the people still did not have much. Despite this, they were happy.

Through the midst of this lively crowd slipped a young girl. Her dark skin and dark green and brown clothing that was so typical of almost every citizen of the Earth Kingdom, helped her blend into the mass of moving bodies unnoticed. Her thick black hair was scraped back into a short ponytail, with two small braids running under her ears to help keep every strand out of her face. Her dark brown eyes darted this way and that, watching everything.

She slid between two arguing merchants and ran up to the counter of a large fruit stand, standing on her tip toes to peer over the edge. “Nana Junebug?”

A kindly old woman who had been dozing on the stool behind the stands of fruits jolted awake. “Hmm-? Oh, Tama! Tama, dear. What brings you to my stand today?”

Tama gave her a cheeky smile. “Just on my way home. I wondered if you had any extras today.”

Nana Junebug chuckled to herself, and shuffled over to the back of the stall where they kept surplus fruit and damaged crates. Her real name was not Junebug, but she had been telling the children of the neighborhood to call her that for so long that the name stuck with everyone. Rifling through the crates that had arrived too battered to be set out on display, she found a couple lightly bruised apples and a bushel of just-ripe bananas that wouldn’t last the day on her stand. She set these on the counter to be quickly snatched up by her little customer.

Tama turned to leave, but felt guilty and looked back at the old woman. “I will pay you back someday,” she said solemnly.

Nana Junebug waved her away. “Don’t bother, dearie. I still remember when your mama made me that poultice to put on my aching knees - thanks to her, this stand is still running because I’m still standing!” She didn’t catch the shadow that fell across Tama’s face at that remark. “If you run an errand for me tomorrow, I’ll give you a couple bushels of green bananas to save for next week.”

The girl considered this. “Okay, deal. I’ll come tomorrow morning before lunch.”

“Alright, dearie. Now run along home. Tell your mama I say hi, and I hope she feels better!”

“I will.”

Then Tama made her way back through the crowd, occasionally greeting a familiar face. She knew most of the vendors and shop owners in this part of the Lower Ring, for ever since her mother had moved the both of them to Ba Sing Se when she was a baby, they were the only people she knew. The children of the neighborhood tended to avoid her because she was so quiet and she didn’t go to school like the rest of them. _They’re jealous I don't have to be trapped in school all day like them,_ Tama used to think whenever she got sad that they didn’t play with her.

But as familiar as she was with the adults of the area, she knew they didn’t really care about her beyond a little fondness. _Otherwise they would have noticed my situation by now,_ she thought bitterly.

She arrived at her tiny ramshackle “house” - if you could call it that - in an alley off the main marketplace road. Pushing her way inside, she made her way into one of the only two rooms, the combined kitchen and bedroom. Setting her fruits on the counter, she bustled around the tiny space, cleaning up from the breakfast she had been too busy to put away that morning before work. She ran messages between a dozen storefronts in the southern half of the Lower Ring. In any given day she ran roughly five leagues back and forth between them, letting the shopkeepers know what was selling well and what wasn’t, what needed to be restocked, orders from the manager. Sometimes she ran the restocks herself if the loads were light. She did this from dawn until noon, then took a couple hours to earn favors and food by running errands for the local vendors. All of this was barely enough to cover the rent on her tiny home. 

A part of her knew that nine was too young to be working - in fact, if she’d lived in the Middle Ring, it would have been illegal. But here in the Lower Ring people took what they could get, and there were hundreds of small children like her that worked part time in places that didn’t mind turning a blind eye to the laws if it meant they could get away with paying less for labor, especially labor like message running that was always done quicker and more efficiently by the nimbleness of children.

And as long as her payment miraculously appeared on her landlord’s doorstep once a month, he never bothered her. The shack - to call it a house was too generous - was still registered under her mother’s name, Hana, but the landlord didn’t care where the money came from. And he, like the rest of the neighborhood, knew that Hana had been sick for a long while and didn’t want to get anywhere near their door.

“How ironic,” people used to say. “A talented young herbalist constantly sick from something she can’t cure.”

Tama used to spit at people that dared make jokes about her mother near her, but people had stopped wondering, stopped caring. She kept telling them that Hana was getting better, she was just tired from her body constantly fighting the illness. She’d get better. You’ll see her next week. You’ll see.

The girl sighed and hoisted herself up to sit on the counter, munching moodily on an apple. She surveyed the small room like a king over his kingdom, except her kingdom was just a lumpy old bed and a shelf full of knicknacks. The other room of the house was her dirty bathroom. However, the shack did have one unusual perk: a tiny scrap of a backyard. Tama’s dull gaze stared out the small window at the half-dead grass, and beyond it to the ugly stone backside of the store on the other side of the alley. The buildings pressed in all around her were an unexpected blessing in that they offered privacy, which Tama was endlessly grateful for, considering how precious that tiny backyard was to her.

Finishing her apple, she made her way outside to kneel in the grass underneath the shade of the tiny, four-foot-tall apple tree that grew in the center, and stroked the thin trunk ruefully. She’d planted the poor scrap at age three from one of the first apples she’d ever been given by Nana Junebug. It struggled through its young life, lovingly watered by her young guardian, growing taller so slowly that sometimes Tama wondered if it was even growing at all. 

At age three she’d told her mother, “It’s guarding our backyard!”

Now it guarded something far more precious.

“I’m home, Momma,” Tama whispered. Her hand fell from the trunk to a large stone that rested against its side. There was nothing written on it, simply a clumsy engraving of a small flower. Around the stone bloomed various types of flowers and smaller plants. Several of the plants looked very peculiar in their fairly barren wasteland, for they were typically found in rainier climes like a forest. 

Then, after glancing all about her, and even up to the roofs, Tama took a deep breath and did something she had once promised her mother never to do. (She had at least followed through on the promise never to show another soul.) Taking a minute to slow her breaths, she picked up her hand and slammed it into the ground. 

In an instant she got an impression of all the buildings around her, and she stretched her senses to surround the whole block. She had learned to do this by accident when she was little, and started to predict when her mother would leave and enter rooms, when the landlord was coming to collect rent, when patients would come to see her.

When her mother was still alive.

Assured that there was no one around to witness what she was about to do, Tama spared one more look at the house and concentrated on the ground around her. Seismic sense was a somewhat rare ability, but for a talented earthbender like Tama it should have been nothing to hide. It was what she was about to do next that she was so hesitant about letting others see.

With a great deal of concentration, Tama reached her senses into the earth, beyond the grass. It was the dry season in Ba Sing Se, and she didn’t have the money to pay for water from the pipes like so many others in the city. However, in a stroke of luck she had recently discovered that her ramshackle alley was built right over an underground stream.

Tama twisted her hands and _pulled_. She felt the water underneath her jerk, and then a steady stream of it filtered out of the dirt to her side and hovered above her palms. As always, a thrill of excitement rushed through her small body whenever she did this. She had demonstrated a propensity for earthbending very young, something her mother encouraged and was proud of. However, on her fifth birthday she had been taking a rare bath and managed to suspend half of her bath water above her head. 

That was when Hana had started to get nervous. Sure enough, two years later, just after she’d fallen ill, they hadn’t had enough money to pay for the gas heating their landlord was loathe to install. And just as the winter was getting worse, and Hana’s sickness accelerating along with it, Tama revealed that she could light a fire with nothing but her hands. 

It was then, when Tama was seven, that Hana realized what would take the rest of the world years to learn: she knew the identity of the new avatar. This terrified rather than excited her, and she refused to tell Tama about it. Most parents might have been delighted to realize their child was the new avatar. Hana could only think that, should anyone find out, they would take her daughter away. Tama was all she had, and especially as she got sicker, it didn’t even cross her mind that they might be able to help her. Her every waking moment was consumed with fear that she would be alone.

Her illness worsened and her delusion grew, though Tama didn’t realize it, and she spent more and more time convincing the child that bending was something she should hide, that it would get her taken away from home forever. Tama believed her, and she never let anyone know that she had these abilities, not even earthbending.

And since they could not afford school and legends were not something shopkeepers talked about, Tama barely even knew what an avatar was.

So there she was, aged nine, kneeling next to the tree in her backyard, bending water out of the ground to nourish it. She took extra care with the delicate flowers around her mother’s gravestone, the grave she had bent herself out of the earth. Still convinced that she would be taken away should anyone learn about Hana’s death, she kept up the pretense that her mother was only sick. 

“I’ll stay here, Momma,” Tama promised the tree. “I don’t wanna leave. Maybe when I’m older I’ll tell them about you. Maybe I’ll show someone what I can do with rocks, and water, and fire. But I’ll stay here for now.”

The wind rustled the leaves of the trees and the sun made her feel cozy and warm. Though she would have loved to stay and curl up under the shade to nap, she knew that the nearest store was expecting her soon, so she stood and brushed off her pants. “Be back in a bit.”

When she exited and locked her front door, she caught a glimpse of someone standing in the shadows further down the alley. Tama wandered a little closer. “Who are you?”

The figure didn’t reply, they simply moved a little closer. Tama studied the woman curiously. She was tall, and had dark skin and hair, and seemed to be wearing quite a lot of blue clothing and furs. “Are you from the Water Tribe? I’ve met a couple before. It’s a bit hot out to be wearing so much fur.”

Still the woman didn’t say a thing, just watched Tama with sad blue eyes. The girl was a little put out by this silent treatment, and unsettled too. “Look, miss, I gotta go to work. Do you need something?”

Finally she spoke. _“Find yourself, Tama.”_

“How do you know my name?”

 _“Look for the sky bison. Find yourself.”_ Then the woman simply vanished in a flash of light, making Tama gasp and stumble backwards. 

“I must be dreaming,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes. “Or I’m going crazy.” She stood in the alley for a long time, thinking about what the strange lady had said, but eventually made her way out to the store. She had a living to earn, she couldn’t be concerned with some crazy vision.

But something about that woman had seemed familiar. It nagged at her, distracted her so much that during one of her message runs to one of the rare stores in the Middle Ring she nearly ran over a man.

“Watch it!” the tall man snapped, then said more gently, “especially next to the road.”

“Sorry.” Tama moved to continue on her way, ignoring him when he called after her.

“Hey, where are your parents?”

It stung a little, she had to admit, but she was used to passersby inquiring after her guardians. She’d gotten pretty good at spinning elaborate lies about them being traveling salesmen, that she was trying to find her cousin, that she was on her way home anyway. But this time she was already late on her message run and she didn’t bother turning back to answer him.

Behind her, the man scratched at his dark spiky hair. Something about her seemed familiar, but he couldn’t figure out what. A man with similar hair came up behind him, struggling to hold three bulging bags full of groceries.

“You coming, Mako?”

He spun to face his brother. “Yeah. We still need eggs and noodles - what did the kids say they wanted for dinner again?”

Mako continued on throughout the rest of his day, as did Tama, and neither of them spared the other another thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i started writing this story, it occurred to me that every avatar whose childhood we know about seems to have been raised pretty well. they all have pretty secure parents or at least parental figures, secure communities who care about them, and their identities as the avatar have been pretty common knowledge. so i really wanted to play with the idea of an avatar who had a really crappy home life and doesn't know much about who she's supposed to be.
> 
> anyway... ;) hope y'all enjoyed! next chapter will be a lot more about catching up with old friends...


	3. Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catching up with old friends, and hoping to soon find a new one.

**92nd Year Since the Great War**

“Jinora! Jinoraaa! JINNOOOOO-“

A disheveled head of brown hair popped up over the side of the skybison saddle she was sleeping in. “What?” Jinora snapped. The normally cool and collected airbending master was exhausted and irritable, and her nap in Pepper’s saddle was the first time she’d slept more than three hours in the last week. And considering the person yelling her name was just about the last person she wanted to see…

“You’re gonna be late to the meeting,” Meelo said. 

His sister muffled a string of curse words that would have shocked anyone that only knew her as a serene spiritual figure. _My siblings always bring out the worst side of me_ , she lamented. “I’m coming,” she called down to her brother. “Tell them I’ll be there as soon as I’m packed.”

He rolled his eyes and turned to leave. “Whatever you say, Wise Master.” 

Jinora resisted the childish urge to stick her tongue out at him. She was thirty-two now, for Spirits’ sake. Grumbling to herself as she clambered down Pepper’s tail, she airbent various bags and knicknacks she thought she might need on her trip into the saddle and strapped them down. Then, after taking a minute to brush off her robes and straighten the high-tech flysuit she wore under her more official fabrics, she smoothed out her hair and made sure her arrow was fully visible.

“THEEEEY’RE WAAAAIIITIIIIIING-“

“ALRIGHT, Meelo!” she hollered back. She’d have thought that becoming a father would have taught Meelo to be _quieter_.

As she made her way from the stables to the main building, Jinora glanced to her left and found the reassuring sight of the statue that had guarded the bay she’d grown up in all her life: her grandfather, Avatar Aang. He stood solidly on his island, stoic as ever. Every morning that she had the chance, she liked to meditate and pray to his spirit, asking for guidance. Perhaps today would be the day she could fulfill her promise to him. Though she didn’t have the time for meditation, she took a moment to bow and whisper, “I will find your new spirit, Aang. In your memory and in Korra’s.” Then she muttered an ancient Air Nomad prayer and continued on her way.

The statue of Aang gleamed in the sunlight, somewhat brighter, if only for a moment.

—

“Good morning, Master Jinora.”

Jinora dipped her head in greetings to the two White Lotus masters who stood before her. “Master Lao, Master Wei. Good morning.” 

“We have received three more claims, an unusually high number for a single month.” Lao clasped his hands behind his back and frowned. “They are all from the Middle Ring of Ba Sing Se.”

_They cut right to the chase,_ Jinora thought. “That is… uncommon. But we’ll investigate every claim, just as we have all these years.” _Nine years. Too long._

Korra had been discovered at age four. Aang had probably been the same or younger but it was impossible to know, considering the monks had only told him at age eleven and those who could have known sooner were long dead. Jinora had naïvely made it her goal to find the child before age six. Then seven, then eight. Now she was rather glumly set on ten, but every day she grew less optimistic.

“Very well. We have a group awaiting your arrival tonight in Ba Sing Se,” Master Wei said. “We have also received word that an old friend of yours will be joining you. Mako, our agent said?”

Jinora brightened considerably at that. “Mako! Now there’s a good piece of news. I’ll set off immediately.”

“Before you do, I hope you’d spare a moment to say goodbye to your parents,” a raspy voice interrupted. She spun around with a smile to see her mother and father, the latter leaning on his wife’s shoulder.

“Dad,” she said warmly, “I’d never forget such a thing.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you,” her mother scoffed, but moved to embrace her eldest daughter anyway.

Tenzin waited with a gentle smile for Jinora to break away from the ever-clingy Pema, giving his daughter a tight hug. His beard, now almost entirely white, brushed her forehead as she buried her head in his chest. She'd gotten taller, but not quite to her father’s stature.

“Be safe,” he whispered. “Bring them home.”

“I will,” she solemnly promised. Promise after promise... she hoped she wouldn’t let them down.

She escorted her aging (now there was a scary realization) parents out of the temple to the courtyard where Pepper was waiting, but her sky bison wasn’t the only one waiting for her.

“Ikki??”

“What’s up?” Ikki jumped off of Pepper’s saddle. “Hey Mom, Dad! Things at the Southern Temple were kinda slow, so I thought I’d come visit.”

Jinora smiled and hugged her sister. “Well it’s nice to see you, but I was just about to leave.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

Pema was not-so-subtly signaling that she wanted to drag everyone inside for tea, but Jinora was acutely aware of how much time she had left in the day and how long it would take her to fly to Ba Sing Se. “Mom, I’m sorry, but I really should go.”

Tenzin cut off his wife’s indignant retort with a simple “Go ahead, Jinora. We’ll all have dinner together when you come back.”

Jinora smiled once more at Ikki, bowed to her parents, and bounded over to her bison, bending herself onto the crook of the bison’s neck. “Yip yip, Pepper!” She took off into the evening sky, only sparing a glance for the statue of Aang as she passed and not letting herself look backwards at Air Temple Island.

_I will find the new Avatar this time,_ she forced herself to think. _I will. I can’t let them down._

—

“Uncle, I’m cold,” said a plaintive young voice.

The uncle smiled and indulgently held out his hand, palm up. “Alright, but remember, no touching.” With a twitch of his fingers, a small flame sprung up an inch above his skin, and the girl who had requested it eagerly held out her own hands to warm them.

“Quit hogging, Sai,” another voice snapped. “Uncle Mako, can I have a hand?”

Mako laughed at his nieces. “It takes a lot of effort to make a flame, you know. Why don’t you ask your cousin?”

The second speaker, his niece Kamaya, turned to Aiko with crossed arms and a haughty: “Well?”

Aiko raised an eyebrow. Though he was only two years older, he often seemed far more mature than his twin cousins. “Ask nicely, Maya.” She rolled her eyes but repeated herself more gently, and he responded by holding both hands out and conjuring a flame slightly larger than his father’s.

Mako kept one eye on his son, but with a flicker of pride he knew he didn’t really need to. At eleven, the boy was still largely untrained a talented firebender. Besides talent, he had also inherited a fair amount of his father’s stoicism, which was rare in a firebender but made him an excellent balance to his rambunctious cousins. Mako sighed just thinking about Bolin’s kids.

The twins were thoughtful, brilliant kids, but for some reason they seemed to have been born with an innate desire to compete with anyone or anything. He’d thought it was bad enough when they were toddlers and fought over who could throw toys the farthest, or scream the loudest, or make Aiko cry the fastest. (The poor boy had since developed a thick skin, thanks to them.) But then they had discovered their bending powers. Opal and Bolin had been delighted: they each had a child to teach their element to. And they’d thought that with such opposite elements, the girls would find it harder to compare and compete.

Oh boy, had they thought wrong. Kamaya and Sayen had spent the last couple years discovering every possible way air and earth could be put on a level playing field, and thereby figure out which one was best at something. And when it was impossible to directly pit themselves against each other, the twins would direct their boundless energies into testing the limits of others.

Speaking of, in the brief moment of time Mako had drifted off to contemplate his nieces, they had both started to not-so-subtly test who could bend better with their feet. Every couple of seconds, the roof would shift under Sayen’s feet, turning her away from the fire, or a gust of wind would blow Kamaya’s hair in her face. Aiko, thick skin still easily stretched, was growing visibly annoyed, and his fire was growing in response.

“Cut it out, girls. Aiko - careful,” Mako said sternly. “Remember, watch your breath.”

His nieces muttered apologies and stood still. His son nodded seriously and took a deep breath, willing the flame to shrink. Then, to both his cousins’ delight, he made it grow and shrink repeatedly in time with his breaths. Mako chuckled at the trick he had only recently taught his son, but was suddenly distracted by movement in the night sky.

Sayen saw it too. “Uncle Mako! Is that her?”

Mako squinted upwards. His eyes weren’t as young as they used to be, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a vaguely bison-shaped figure blocking out the stars. Pepper’s quiet roar confirmed his suspicion. “I think it is. Alright, step back kids.” They did so eagerly, and watched with bated breath as he twisted into a basic form and shot a powerful stream of flames into the air. That was the signal for Jinora to turn her sky bison around and land next to them on the roof, and as the multi-ton bison shook the building, Mako muttered a prayer to the Spirits that Pepper wouldn’t break his house. Juicy was already roosting under the shelter they’d erected on the other half of the roof - as if on cue, Opal’s bison let out a small grunt of recognition seeing his littermate again.

“Mako!” Jinora called cheerfully, sliding down Pepper’s neck and breaking her fall with a swirl of air. They embraced heartily, and she turned her attention to the children. “And Aiko, and Sayen and Kamaya! Wow, I didn’t think I’d get to see all three of you! You’ve gotten so big.”

“Aunt Jinora, can we get a ride on Pepper?” Kamaya asked enthusiastically.

“Aunt Jinora, show me an airbending trick! Mom won’t let me learn anything complicated.”

“Aunt Jinora, when will Sai get her tattoos?”

“Maya, you know I can’t get my tattoos for years, I haven’t even-“

“Alright, alright!” Jinora interrupted, laughing at her “nieces” antics. “You have a lot of questions. Let’s go inside and then I’ll try and answer them. First, will you help me unload my things?”

Sayen, eager to show off, propelled herself upwards with a haphazard blast of air that nearly knocked the others over, and Kamaya responded by shooting herself after her sister with the help of a single stomp and an outcropping of rock.

“Maya, quit ruining our roof!” Aiko cried, stomping after his cousins to (very maturely) wait at Pepper’s side and catch the bags they were throwing over the side of the saddle.

Jinora and Mako rolled their eyes in unison. “It’s nice to see you again,” the airbender said warmly. “So if the girls are here, is Bolin downstairs?”

“Yep. He and Opal weren’t gonna visit until next week, but when I told them you were coming they moved their vacation up. The twins have been dying to see you - I don’t think you’ve visited Ba Sing Se since-“ he faltered. 

Jinora’s face fell as well. The last time she’d been to Ba Sing Se had been one of the very first claims of an Avatar sighting, and she’d foolishly gotten everyone’s hopes up - including her own - to a degree that it was devastating to discover the child was merely a very gassy earthbender. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’ve been all over the Earth Kingdom lately, but we’ve gotten three claims in a month, all from this city.” She frowned. “It seems too coincidental… but maybe one of them will be true.”

“Maybe.”

The two adults lapsed into silence, watching the children squabble over who got to carry what into the house. Mako finally intervened, carrying the more delicate-looking objects himself, and Jinora unloaded the small bundle of hay she’d brought for Pepper’s dinner, rubbing Juicy’s nose (carefully) as she passed him.

“I’ll buy you a whole bushel of apples tomorrow, I promise,” she said to her bison, who merely grunted and began to inhale the straw. “Goodnight, girl. Goodnight, Juicy!”

Then she followed Mako and his family downstairs, and was nearly knocked into the wall by a sudden blast of wind.

“Sayen! _What_ did I say about airbending in the house-“

“Sorry, Aunt Jinora! Ugh, _Mom_ , I wasn’t _trying_ to-“

“Jinora!”

The master airbender blinked in confusion at the cacophany of sudden noise, but focused on the broad figure rapidly moving towards her. “Oh- hey, Bolin!” She returned his enthusiastic hug.

“It’s so good to see you!” the earthbender gushed. “The girls have been dying to see you again!” 

Jinora laughed. “So I was told. Where’s Pearl?”

Mako took her bags from her and ushered her towards the couch. “She’s off on a business trip right now, she’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her.” Jinora gratefully took a seat, and caught sight of another old friend in the kitchen. “Hey, Opal!”

Opal flashed a grin at her old mentor and hugged Sayen closer to herself. She was still scolding the girl for so haphazardly airbending around the house, and judging by how quiet Kamaya was being, she’d already heard about the roof. Their reunion wasn’t so remarkable, seeing as Opal still traveled to the various air temples on occasion and she tended to cross paths with Jinora fairly frequently.

Aiko entered the room balancing a tray laden with tea cups. “I’ve brought tea,” he announced. “Aunt Jinora, do you want jasmine or green?”

“Jasmine would be lovely.”

He dropped a tea bag into a small cup of water and lifted it into the palm of his hand, concentrating on it and heating the clay cup in a flash, then hissing in disappointment. “Shoot. Um, that might be a little hot.”

“I don’t mind,” Jinora said with a small smile, lifting the cup out of his hands with a tiny air scooter that surrounded the cup and gently brought it to her. By the time she could reach it, the cup had cooled down and she drank gratefully.

“That was so cool,” Sayen gasped. “I can’t do anything that concentrated yet.”

Opal quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t think even I could lift something that small so gently. When you teach Sai you’ve gotta teach me too.”

The conversation continued in that way, dancing over superficial topics. Jinora learned that Aiko was excelling so much in firebending school that he had been accepted into a rigorous apprenticing program at the Fire Nation capital, which she heartily congratulated him for. “I’ll have to introduce you to Prince Kuzon. He’s your age, I think he’d be about your level in firebending too.” 

Aiko’s eyes bulged a little. He knew that his father and his friends were close to the royal family, but still, the thought of making friends with a prince was intimidating. “O-okay.”

Then Bolin rambled for a solid ten minutes about how Kamaya had bent metal the other day, and that Sayen was already managing to lift herself off the ground on small air scooters, and their first day at school, and that time they’d almost set the house on fire, and how he was determined to get them both fire ferrets as pets. He didn’t pause even when the two girls in question left the room to get away from his embarassing antics.

“Well I’m glad I got away from the White Lotus and convinced them to let me stay with you,” Jinora said warmly as the conversation died down. 

Opal smiled. “It’s been far too long since so many of us were under one roof. We’re happy you came to visit!”

“Me too. I only wish it wasn’t for…” she faltered. “Work.”

That killed the mood real quick. Mako found his eyes drifting to the mantel, where he’d hung an old picture taken of Team Avatar. He was standing off to the side, trying to be mature, while Asami stood on the other end laughing. In between them Korra was trying very hard to put Bolin in a violent headlock. It was a funny picture, but it just made him sad to look at now.

“You’ll find her,” Opal said confidently.

Bolin raised an eyebrow at his wife. “What makes you so sure it’s a girl?”

“I just have a feeling.”

Aiko cut in confidently. “The cycle alternates though, doesn’t it? Like - Yangchen, then Kuruk, then Kyoshi, then Roku - oh, I guess Aang and Roku were two in a row.” He frowned and started counting on his fingers.

Mako rolled his eyes. “I think it will be whatever it’s meant to be.”

“Korra always joked about wanting to understand why boys thought the way they did. _I_ think-“

“ _Clearly_ she was joking about it, though, she used to say that because the way you boys act is ridiculous-“

The debate continued in this fashion for a good couple of minutes, while Jinora just watched silently. At first she was a little peeved by their speculation, but she realized that it was actually a blessing to see this conversation. 

_For the past nine years we’ve been too scared to even say Korra’s name. It’s nice to hear it again._

Before long she was dozing off, and her dreams were full of little girls with Korra’s eyes, throwing rocks around and laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at this point, this fic is set about sixteen years after the end of legend of korra, and it's been nine years since korra's death. mako and bolin are both married (ew lol) - i just made up mako's wife, i think she's a nonbender from ba sing se. also i named her pearl bc ... opal and pearl... gettit
> 
> the three kids you've met in this one are going to be some of the main characters of this story, as they are all very close in age to tama. there's aiko, mako's son (who is about as insufferable as season2 zuko but like... less murdery); and bolin and opal's twins, kamaya and sayen. they're aggressive.
> 
> the prince kuzon i mentioned is who you think he is - iroh's son. i won't reveal his mother yet (or his siblings) because i still haven't decided whether or not i want to go the ridiculous route or just make up a random oc wife for him. in this, izumi only retired like a year after korra died, so firelord iroh is still kinda new and he's a little peeved that he had to give up being a general. 
> 
> anyway that's a lot of words. i'll make a list of the next generation at some point, if you're interested in it. 
> 
> thanks for reading!
> 
> EDIT: oh yeah, for those of you that catch my sneaky one liner: meelo is indeed a father. i'll get to it. ;) and i haven't forgotten rohan, he's just a rebellious 21 year old who doesn't like to stick around for family tea parties.


	4. Tales of Ba Sing Se, Pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three cousins go on an adventure, and make a new friend... sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo i had to rewatch all the ba sing se episodes in korra book 3 to try and figure this out. so my conclusion is that there is no longer a wall between the lower and middle rings, but obviously poverty sucks and doesn't magically go away, so the other side still sucks. also i have no idea what kind of government ba sing se settled on, so i'm going for a presidency.

“Maya, for Spirits’ sake, put your sister _down!_ ”

Kamaya pouted and punched her fist downwards. The platform she’d raised under Sayen’s bed that trapped her sister to the ceiling sunk back into the floor. She was then immediately knocked over by a retaliatory gust of wind.

“Sayen!”

“Sorry…”

Opal buried her face in her hands and sighed. She loved her daughters, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out where they’d gotten such aggressive personalities. She and Bolin were both fairly easygoing, but if she took her eyes off the twins for five minutes they’d be pounding each other into walls with their bending.

“Your father and I will be going into the city today with Aunt Jinora and Uncle Mako. You’ll stay here with your cousin and take care of Pepper and Juicy.”

“Mooom, that’s not fair!” Kamaya cried.

“Yeah, we wanna help you look for the Avatar!”

“And teach her earthbending-“

“-and airbending-“

“-and how to metalbend-“

“-don’t be stupid, Maya, _you_ can’t even metalbend yet-“

“Alright!” their mother barked. “That’s enough. This is Jinora’s mission, and she wants to do it as quietly as possible. I thought when we told you she was coming for such an important reason, you both agreed you were capable of keeping it a secret. It seems to me you’re not as serious about that as I thought. Maybe going home to Zao Fu a bit early is what we’re gonna have to do.”

Both her girls blanched.

“No, we promise!”

“We’ll take such good care of Pepper and Juicy.”

“We wanna meet the new Avatar!”

Opal was silent for a long moment, glaring sternly at them both. When they had just started to squirm, she relented. “Alright, I’ll trust you. But you answer to Aiko.” They rolled their eyes. “And the three of you will run an errand for me - quietly and without disturbing the neighborhood - to buy the bison more food.”

They grumbled their assent, and she gave them each a quick hug before leaving.

“Be good! Aiko’s in charge!” She exited the room, muttering the whole way about headaches and hoping they didn’t kill each other or their cousin.

“Aiko’s like a stuffy old man,” Sayen muttered.

Her twin snorted. “He acts like he’s Fire Nation prince. Never shuts up about the-“ she raised her eyebrows and imitated a haughty voice “-‘ancient, noble art of firebending’.”

Sayen giggled.

As if on cue, their cousin poked his head in the door, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Aunt Opal left some breakfast for you guys. When you’re finished eating, come up to the roof. We’ll brush the bison first and then go to the store.”

They nodded seriously, but the second he left, they dissolved into a fit of laughter.

“I’m Aiko, and I became a forty year old man at the age of eleven,” Kamaya said mockingly.

“Ugh, seriously. Let’s go.”

The twins scarfed down their breakfast and raced each other, pushing and shoving, up the stairs to the roof. As much as they teased their cousin, they took their mother’s warning about sending them home seriously.

“Juice!” they yelled in unison when they reached the bison’s shelter. Their mother’s bison looked up and groaned happily at the sight of his small humans. He tried to drool on them when they got closer, but having grown up with the leaky creature, both twins sidestepped the puddle easily. 

“Hey, Pep,” Sayen said happily when she reached the other bison. Pepper was even more excited to see them - she loved children, and she especially loved seeing the small children her master’s friends had all produced. While the twins gave both large creatures some facial rubs, Aiko emerged from under Pepper’s side, out of breath.

“Can you help me get this saddle undone? There are so many damn straps,” he wheezed, spitting fur and trying to get it out of his hair.

“Sure,” Sayen said easily, ducking under Pepper’s foreleg and unsnapping each buckle with the ease of practice. Then she helped her cousin slide it to one side, bending clumsy gusts of air underneath it to make sure it didn’t crash onto the ground or crush him.

Pepper grumbled happily to be free of her saddle, and sniffed intrusively into Aiko’s robes. “Woah,” he laughed, “sorry, Pep. No food in here. We’re gonna get that next.”

Kamaya leaned on Juicy and crossed her arms, the picture of preteen defiance. “So, Master Aiko, when shall we embark upon our journey?”

He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t ask to be in charge, Maya, I just happen to have been born two years before you. And we have to brush them down first.” The twins pulled faces. “Your mom did say something … what was it? … If the bison aren’t being taken care of, you’d need to go back to Zao Fu soon.”

They glared at him. “Low blow.” But they got to work, hoisting the massive brushes and dragging them through white fur. It was just past shedding season, so not as messy as it could be, but Pepper and Juicy were exceptionally furry creatures and it took almost an hour and a lot of sweat for the three kids to brush them down. Then they took turns filling pails from the water spout on the roof and dousing the bison, washing all the fur away into the drain underneath the shelter. 

When Mako had first moved his family into this large, upscale Middle Ring house, he knew he could expect frequent visits from ten-ton flying bison, and with Bolin’s aid built a sturdy shelter and drainage system. There was also a large shed to store hay in, but both Opal and Jinora’s visits were sudden enough that Mako hadn’t had time to buy adequate amounts of food for them.

Once Pepper and Juicy were damp but clean - and a couple pounds lighter - all three cousins took a break to sit on the edge of the roof and eat snacks Opal had left for them. 

“Which store are we going to?” Sayen asked around a mouthful of banana.

Aiko shrugged. “Dunno. I don’t do these bison shopping trips often, and even though you don’t live here you probably know where to look better than I do.”

The twins looked at each other, looked at the bison, and shrugged. “Uh… are there any pet stores in this part of town? Or stores with warehouses? We’re gonna need to buy _a lot_ of food.”

“Oh yeah, how are we gonna get it back here?”

Aiko reached into his robes and pulled out a small white carving on a string. “Aunt Opal gave me her bison whistle. She said once we’d bought all the food we could call for Juicy and he’d help us take it back. So I guess we should start in the closest shopping district - it’s towards the edge of where the Middle Ring and the Lower Ring meet, it’s where my parents go to buy groceries.”

After another snack downstairs, they set out on their adventure, all three talking animatedly about their latest bending tricks. Having three different elements between them, occasionally even the twins could let go of competition for the sake of competition and just marvel at what the others could do. Aiko and Kamaya were especially fascinated with Sayen’s development of her air scooter technique, though it wasn’t exactly perfected. At the moment she could form a loose ball of air currents and lift herself off the ground for a few seconds, but she couldn’t quite get to the point of moving herself around.

“It’s really frustrating,” Sayen said after her third attempt to show them, rolling her eyes. “Mom keeps showing me the moves but I just can’t seem to do it right. I love her but she’s not a very good teacher. Aunt Jinora promised she’d help me work on it in her last letter, but I know she’s gonna be too busy while she’s here to spend any time focusing on it.”

Kamaya nudged her sister when she pulled a glum expression. “Aunt Jinora’s just really nervous about this whole Avatar thing. Once she’s found them, she’ll have plenty of time to show you some new moves.”

“Shh!” Aiko hissed, glancing about them. The streets weren’t very crowded, but he was a paranoid kid. “We’re not supposed to be talking about the A-word situation out in public.”

“Cool it, Hotman. Nobody’s listening. And anyway, Aunt Jinora’s a pretty famous Airbending Master. Everyone knows she’s gonna train the next Avatar anyway, we just don’t know who it is.”

“It’s cool that the Avatar will be the same age as us, though,” Sayen said thoughtfully. “Hey Aiko - do you remember Avatar Korra at all?”

He shook his head, scuffing the dirt as he walked. “I wish. I was two, two and a half maybe when she died. I think I remember her showing me waterbending once, or maybe firebending, but …” he sighed. “I do remember when the two of you were born, though. It was like the month after.”

The twins nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, mom said that if we found the Avatar and she wasn’t so good at earth or airbending yet, we’d get to help train her.”

Their cousin laughed. “It would be pretty cool to help the Avatar learn firebending. But I don’t know that you’d be much of a help, Maya. Usually Avatars master their native element pretty early. Dad once told me that Korra was a master waterbender when she was seven - she learned from Katara herself!”

They shared tall tales of the previous Avatars that their parents had told them the whole way to the marketplace, and Aiko pointed out the food warehouse he knew sold large quantities of feed. They had just started to browse the shelves when Aiko caught sight of someone.

“Hey, I recognize that girl,” he said suddenly, pointing. The twins turned away from the candy they’d been ogling. A couple yards ahead of them, a kid about their age was maneuvering through the crowd, balancing a basket on her head and holding it with her hands. She was wearing a dark green tunic with black pants. “My mom and I ran into her once, literally. I remember it because my mom said she looked too young to be working, and she told us her dad owned the store and she was just helping out for the day.” The young firebender frowned. “I remember seeing her again two weeks later and wondering about it.”

The twins were instantly curious. Aiko realized too late the beast he’d awoken, and groaned when they started to “wander” towards her, but followed without protest.

They pretended to look at food stands and kept her in their peripheral vision. The girl stopped to readjust the basket, but avoided the crowded front and moved to the alley beside the store. 

She set her basket down in front of a side door and waited until someone came out to talk to her. The trio inched closer to the storefront and pretended to look at cabbages while they eavesdropped.

“-from the Baker street warehouse. Noa said you needed more produce.”

The man grunted. “Alright. But it took you almost ten minutes to get here, Tama.”

She crossed her arms, clearly affronted by this. “Baker street is almost a league that way, and I was carrying _that_ the whole time.”

“Whatever, kid. Tell the Greenwood street store we’re selling out of rice, and they should check their inventory. Now scram before somebody sees you.”

Tama huffed and moved away quickly, so fast that the cousins almost lost sight of her. Still drawn to this strange girl, the twins immediately moved to follow after their unsuspecting guide, but Aiko stopped them.

“We need to buy the bison food,” he reminded them.

Kamaya shrugged him away. “Whatever. We know where the store is now, we can come back. I wanna follow her.”

Aiko sniffed. “Aunt Opal gave me a job-“

“-and we know how honorable and perfectly punctual you like to be, but this won’t take long. Let’s just follow her and see what happens.” Sayen started moving before she even stopped speaking, and her sister quickly followed. Aiko tried to protest, but quickly realized he was better off trailing them than letting them go alone. Besides, he was curious too, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

They had to jog to keep up with the girl - Tama. She was quick, and seemed to know her way around every street and store. At one point she cut into an alley and they almost lost her, but Aiko spotted her curly ponytail on one of the low roofs above them. “She must have climbed a fire escape. I guess going over rooftops is faster,” Aiko mused.

“Let’s go up there!” Kamaya said enthusiastically, and before her cousin could protest, she yanked them into the alley and stomped her foot. The stone platform launched them upwards and onto the low-hanging fire escape. Sayen was prepared and slowed herself and her twin down with a blast of air, but Aiko nearly missed the rungs of the ladder. Once they’d all clambered up to the low roof, he started to yell,

“That was so reckless, can’t you-“

“Shhh!” Sayen clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him behind a water tower. Tama was three roofs away, but she turned around to scan her surroundings briefly at the noise. Not seeing anything wrong, she continued to walk sedately along the roofs, unbothered by the height. This was clearly something she did often.

“It’s like we’re on a secret mission,” Kamaya whispered gleefully, pulling chunks of rooftop into gaps that were too large to jump so the trio could catch up with their nimble “guide”. Her cousin was not so excited.

“I don’t like this,” Aiko mumbled as they slunk from water tower to water tower, hiding behind walls and outcroppings. 

“Then why are you still here?”

He had to concede that point. As irritating as his cousins were, he’d always had fun when they dragged him into ridiculous adventures he was too reluctant to do alone. Sometimes he wished he had real siblings… then again, every time the twins visited, he was reminded that he basically already had two destructive little sisters and he didn’t need anymore than that.

At one point they lost sight of Tama again - even though she’d slowed her pace down, she knew the roofs far better than they did. It took them a couple of tense minutes to realize she’d climbed back down to the ground level, because they’d reached the huge gap in between buildings that was Circle Street.

Circle Street had been paved where the remains of the wall in between the Lower and Middle Rings used to be, until it had been partially torn down in the uprisings almost two decades ago. Once order had been re-established, and Prince Wu had abolished the monarchy, the wall had been completely removed and made into a massive pedestrians-only street. It was a bustling, bountiful marketplace, though unfortunately poverty wasn’t as easy to get rid of as stone walls - everything on the other side of Circle Street was still more ramshackle than the Middle Ring. 

After frantically scanning the crowd, Sayen spotted Tama at a fruit stand talking to an old woman, and they hurriedly moved to a better place to watch her.

“If she lives in the Lower Ring, that would explain why she’s working,” Aiko commented.

Kamaya raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

“Oh - Zao Fu’s pretty different from Ba Sing Se. I forgot you don’t have a Lower Ring, or anything like it.” He sighed. “My mom doesn’t want me to learn about stuff like this, but my dad will tell me if I ask him. He said he grew up on the streets, and he wants me to know about how tough the world can be sometimes. Basically… a couple years ago, the president of Ba Sing Se really wanted to fix the poverty in the Lower Ring, and they knew that a lot of shady businesses would hire kids to work for them because you don’t have to pay kids as much to work, and really poor families would let their kids work all the time. So he tried to make it illegal. It worked in the Middle Ring, but here? Not so much.”

“That sucks,” Sayen said unhappily. “Kids shouldn’t have to work.”

Aiko eyeballed their quarry, who was stlil talking to the old woman, and who still hadn’t noticed that she was being followed. “She probably doesn’t have a choice. My dad hates that law - he says that it was made for a good reason, but all it does is let the police arrest shopowners that hire kids when they have no other choices. He says-“

“She’s moving!” Kamaya hissed, cutting him off. Losing all sublety, the trio darted after Tama, who had been given a large crate of fruit by the old woman and was struggling to lift it and dodge the crowds. They followed her for what felt like twenty minutes, and by the end of it were sweating in the afternoon sun.

“Spirits, she must be miserable,” Sayen panted. “And we don’t even have to carry anything.”

Sure enough, Tama seemed to be flagging. She kept taking breaks to set the crate down and wipe her forehead, but eventually she seemed to reach her destination: yet another storefront. After dropping the crate with someone and accepting what looked like a single bronze coin in return, she moved into a nearby alley. When the twins started to follow, Aiko stopped them.

“We’re starting to look ridiculous. Let’s wait a second and then wander in there, she’s probably taking a break, and pretend we got lost. We can ask her for directions - then we’ll get to actually meet her, instead of stalking her around the city.”

Kamaya pounded a triumphant fist into her palm. “And we can offer to help her, so she doesn’t have to work anymore!”

Aiko winced. “I- uh. Don’t think that’s such a good idea. Let’s just try being friendly first.”

He led them into the alley, starting an animated discussion about how reckless the twins were, and how they needed to get home before long. Sure enough, Tama was sitting cross legged against the wall, sipping water out of a small clay cup. She glanced up suspiciously when the trio walked by, but didn’t move.

“Excuse me,” Aiko greeted her, “my cousins and I are pretty lost. Do you live here?”

She arched a brow. “Maybe.”

“Uh,” Sayen started. “Could you tell us where we are?”

“The Lower Ring, Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom.”

Kamaya rolled her eyes. “Thanks. Um, do you know how to get back to the Middle Ring?”

Tama looked at her incredulously, like she was the dumbest person she’d ever met. “You’re kidding me, right? It’s on the other side of Circle Street.”

Aiko interrupted. “Sorry! Uh, my cousins don’t live here. We know how to get to the Middle Ring. I just got a little turned around - I live on Potter Lane, off the main Market Street.”

She considered this. “I know how to get you back there, but I’ve been running around all day. I’m not gonna hold your hand and guide you back.”

“That’s fine. Actually, um, we might just take a break anyway. It’s pretty hot. Mind if we sit here?”

Tama sighed like that was the absolute last thing she wanted. “If you want.”

There was an awkward pause, while Sayen looked at her clay cup longingly. “Where’d you get that water? I’m so thirsty.”

For some reason that was a touchy subject with their host. “I dunno. Where do you rich people usually find water? Look, sit here in silence or find another place to sit. I’ll give you your directions if you leave me alone.”

The twins pulled faces at each other when she wasn’t looking, quickly losing interest in this prickly girl. It was more exciting to chase her when they didn’t know how grouchy she was.

“Well, we’re sorry to bother you. If you don’t mind me asking, we noticed you delivering stuff to that store- ow!” Kamaya had been trying to approach the subject subtly, but Aiko delivered a swift jab to the ribs.

“Do you know where we could buy a large amount of feed?” he finished smoothly.

Tama looked suspiciously between the two. She had tensed at the mention of her working, but they hadn’t phrased it like they knew she was breaking the law. “Uh. What kind of feed?”

“Hay, grass. Just really big amounts.”

“The warehouse store on Cornhill - it’s near Potter Lane, also on Market Street - will probably have the amounts you’re looking for.” Aiko gave the twins a significant look, because that was the store where this had all started. “Why? You tryin’ to feed an ostrich horse?”

“Nah, more like a sky bison.”

Tama froze. Her eyes widened impossibly far, and the trio worried for a moment that they’d broken her.

“You okay?” Aiko asked.

Her green eyes darted all around. “Who sent you?”

“Nobody sent us… we got lost, remember?”

“That weird lady sent you,” she muttered. “But I don’t want a sky bison, I don’t want to _find myself_ , and I don’t want anything to do with this. Leave me out of it!” Without warning, she bolted to her feet and took off running.

The trio scrambled to follow her, but now that she was actively trying to lose them, it took her scarcely more than a minute. Finally the cousins collapsed, panting. “Damn, she’s fast. What was her deal, anyway?”

“Don’t know. I guess a weird lady told her that sky bison are… evil?” Kamaya scratched her head.

Aiko looked up and paled when he noticed the sky. “Oh, spirits. It’s way past afternoon. We need to get back!”

The twins groaned and craned their necks at the street behind them. “It took us so long to get here!!! How are we supposed to find our way back without Tama, anyway?”

They looked around despondently, until Aiko hit himself dramatically in the forehead and reached for the string around his neck. “I forgot about Juicy,” he groaned, holding the bison whistle. “Do I just blow it?”

Sayen grabbed it from him before he could. “Careful! Not too loud or you’ll spook every animal in the city. Lightly, like this.” Then she took a breath and carefully blew into the whistle. They moved out towards the middle of Circle Street, looking around at the skyline until they saw a large furry shape rising above the rooftops. Then Sayen blew the whistle again, and Juicy’s loud groan answered them.

People yelled and started to scatter once the bison descended, and the trio shouted apologies and tried to make room for them. Kamaya even tried to raise a small plateau to make room, but got told off by a policeman, and it was only by pointing at a hovering, confused Juicy that they were finally allowed to let the bison land.

“Sorry, buddy,” Kamaya said, stroking his forehead. He grunted and eyeballed the crowd that had started to gather around him. She punched the plateau back into the ground and clambered up his back onto his neck, all three cousins grabbing handfuls of fur to hold onto - seeing as they’d forgotten to reattach his saddle.

“Okay, yip yip!”

Juicy roared and leaped upwards, trying not to hit anyone’s heads as he ascended. There were some flashes of photographs that made the cousins wince.

“Oh, Spirits, my dad is gonna be so mad,” Aiko said. For once, the twins were just as apprehensive, and the rest of the flight home was silent and tense. Juicy, thankfully, knew the way back to Aiko’s house, and when he landed on the roof there was a solitary figure waiting for them.

“Please be Dad, please be Dad,” the twins muttered.

It turned out to be Opal, who interrogated Aiko first as soon as they landed, knowing he would spill the truth. (He did.) Then she berated them for ten full minutes about the dangers of the Lower Ring, and upon figuring out that they had almost flattened a crowd with her sky bison, valiantly resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands and scream.

“What were you thinking?” she finally summarized.

“We were following this girl - Tama - she looked like she needed help, also she might be illegally working, and we wanted to make sure she was okay, so we followed her for a while, and then we caught up to her and talked to her and she’s fine. Okay, a little mean. But fine. And when we told her we had a sky bison she freaked out and ran away so we decided to go home and we had to call Juicy because we didn’t know the way back.” Kamaya took a deep breath.

Her sister added, sheepishly, “Sorry?”

Opal shook her head. “Look, I’m not angry, just disappointed. I expected better from you!”

The twins looked at their feet glumly. “Are we going back to Zao Fu?”

“I’m strongly considering it.” Opal turned her attention to Aiko. “And you, young man?”

He winced. “I didn’t think it was a good idea, but I figured it was better to go with them then to let them do it alone?”

She snorted. “Fair enough. I’ll let your father deal with you. And… for the time being, we’ll stay. But!” The airbender quickly glared down any signs of celebration. “Tomorrow you’ll be staying here with your father.”

“So does that mean you didn’t find the Avatar?” Sayen asked.

“The claim we investigated today was false, yes. Aunt Jinora will be staying a couple more days to find the other families. And you two will be on your best behavior.” Opal turned to look at the horizon. “It’s almost sunset. I’ll have to take Juicy to the store to buy food.”

The cousins exchanged guilty looks.

Opal eyed them all, still trying to be stern, but sighed and held out her arms for her daughters to hug her, which they did. “I’m glad you went on this crazy quest because you were trying to help someone, not because you were trying to cause trouble. Tomorrow you can tell me more about this Tama girl and we’ll see about helping her.” Then she pulled back and looked at them both. “Do I have your word that you’ll take your promise more seriously?”

“Yes!”

“Of course!”

“Alright,” she sighed, “head downstairs, all of you. Dad’s making carrot stew.”

The twins cheered and stampeded down the stairs, but Aiko paused. “Uh, Aunt Opal?”

“Yes?”

He picked at his nails nervously. “It’s about Tama. The girl we followed. We were talking to her about buying bison food, and when she asked what it was for and we told her we had a sky bison, she freaked out. She said a strange lady had told her to find a sky bison, and to find herself, and some other stuff I think. Whoever she was, Tama seemed really scared of her.” He took a deep breath. “What do you think it means?”

“I’m not sure.” Opal put a hand on his shoulder and moved with him as they headed downstairs. “But I promise we’ll talk about her tomorrow and see if we can help.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Throughout the rest of the night, Aiko’s comment floated around Opal’s head, and she puzzled over what it could mean. Sky bison were universally known to be accompanied by airbenders, and she’d assumed that most places welcomed airbenders. Was there someone out there spreading rumors, or trying to turn people against them? It bothered her enough that Bolin started to ask if she was feeling alright, and she promised to fill him in later, but soon enough the hectic life that was being a mother to a set of young twins helped her forget about it.

—

That night in the Lower Ring, as Tama savored the bowl of hot soup she’d earned for carrying more crates for Nana Junebug, she thought about the three weird kids she’d met that day. They said they had a sky bison. She knew what the creatures were supposed to look like, she’d even seen one once or twice flying above Ba Sing Se. But why would the weird lady tell her to find one?

As if on cue, the lady appeared again, sitting on her bed. Tama nearly dropped her soup, but recovered quickly and glared at the apparition.

“Who are you? Can’t you haunt my dreams, like a normal spirit?”

The spirit lady just looked at her with her sad blue eyes. _”I want to help you, Tama. Find the sky bison.”_

“Yeah, I get the sky bison part. You don’t have to send weird kids to talk to me about it, either.”

_”They don’t want to hurt you. They can help you. They can help you find yourself.”_

Tama was starting to get scared. She didn't want to find herself. She didn't even know what that meant. All she was thinking was that at one point, when her mom was really sick, she’d started to see things. Sometimes she'd talk to people that weren't there. Was the same thing happening to her? Was she sick, but much more suddenly? And because she was only nine, she started to cry.

“I don’t want a sky bison,” she sobbed, sinking to the floor and setting her soup down carefully so she could wipe her cheeks. “I just want my momma back.”

The spirit lady looked even sadder. _”I know. I’m sorry about your momma. And I know she told you that people would take you away if you told them about her not being here, but I promise you these people are nice. They want to help you.”_

Tama sniffled. “Who are you, anyway?”

Finally the lady smiled. _“I’m you, Tama. But you can call me Korra.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :-) betcha didn't see that coming. i am so sneaky. how does she do it
> 
> i hope this isn't as much of a mess as i think it is, haha. also yeah tama is full of Righteous Angst right now but i promise she'll calm down. and aiko is his generation's honorable zuko but like book3 zuko without the teenage rebellion.


	5. Tales of Ba Sing Se, Pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search continues, and everyone learns something.

Morning in Ba Sing Se dawned crisp and clear, burning away the low hanging clouds and lighting up the expansive skyline. It crept over the edge of the outer wall, casting long shadows over everything, and illuminating the already-busy streets. 

Jinora watched all of this from her perch, sat comfortably atop the wall between the Lower Ring and the farmland. Her hands ran over the edges of her glider absentmindedly. Her dark eyes scanned the city, back and forth, looking for something that couldn’t be seen no matter how high she climbed.

"Two more claims," she muttered. "Two more. One of them could be true. They could be here."

Her father had always taught her realism, while her mother was more of an optimist. Pema believed strongly that if you believed something, it could happen. Tenzin preferred to be cautiously hopeful, yet skeptical of everything. It was a balance Jinora had never found. She tended to lean towards her mother’s optimism, but in recent years…

"Hey, Jinora," a soft voice said, interrupting her thoughts.

"Hey, Opal."

With a soft rustle of cloth and the _snap_ of a glider being closed, Opal sat next to her friend, feet dangling over the edge. "Worrying about the claims?"

Jinora snorted. "What else is there? What else have I even had the capacity to think about for the last nine years?"

"Well, at least you’re not jaded or anything."

They looked at each other for a moment, then started laughing. Opal threaded her arm through Jinora’s and pulled her closer. They were both wearing their formal orange and yellow tunics today, forgoing flysuits in favor of appearing professional when greeting the families. The tunics were sleeveless, so Jinora found herself looking at their arms and pondering the twisting blue arrows that ran over their skin, dark and light. 

"Let’s talk about something else, then," Opal said. "How are you and Kai doing?"

That brightened Jinora’s mood, but only somewhat. She sighed and kicked her feet. "We’re- good. We’re good, it’s just hard. He’s been really throwing himself into finishing the Northern Air Temple reconstruction, and I’ve been running all over the Earth Kingdom for nine years… so. Y’know."

Opal nodded seriously. "I get that. How _is_ the Northern Temple? I’ve been pretty wrapped up in the south and the east lately, I’ve barely even gotten a chance to visit Republic City."

"It’s good. Better, at least. My dad used to fly out all the time to assist, but my mom put a stop to that." She took a deep breath. "It was breaking his heart to see it so utterly… destroyed."

"Yeah. It’s been almost … wow. About twenty years now, isn’t it?"

Jinora nodded. "Rebuilding is slow. Dad wants it to be perfect, but it’s hard to restore ancient art like that, you know? So certain parts of it by necessity have to be modern, or blank."

Opal squeezed her arm tighter. "He’s probably just wrapped up in memories of your grandfather."

"Definitely." She looked at the sky and smiled wistfully. "I always wished I could have met Grandpa Aang. He died young, you know, for an Avatar. Not as young as… but." She sighed and rubbed her face vigorously. "Ugh, what’s gotten into me this morning? I need to focus today."

"It’s okay to be sad," Opal said softly. "But you’re right. I came up here to tell you that the White Lotus officers are at the house. Bolin’s trying to stall them with tea, bless him, but they seem pretty impatient."

"Let’s go, then." Jinora let go of her arm and stood up. She waited for Opal to do the same. Together they stood on the edge of the wall, wavering in the breeze but not falling.

Then they launched themselves off in unison. When they were younger, they’d make a competition to see who could wait the longest to open their gliders, and that competitive spirit hadn’t died. The women made faces at each other as they fell, but at a conservative hundred feet to the ground, they bent gusts of wind under themselves and opened their gliders. They weren’t quite as reckless as they used to be.

Soaring over the city, letting warm updrafts do the work for her, Jinora slowed her breaths and took a moment to appreciate everything around her. _Whether or not I find the avatar today, it will be alright. They’ll be found when they’re meant to be found._ She looked to her left to watch Opal, who was carving large arcs in her flight path, setting up for a trick.

"Are you trying to challenge me?" Jinora shouted, laughing.

Opal stuck her tongue out. "Care to dance, Master Jinora?"

In unison, they banked hard right, enough to flip themselves over and make tight corkscrews through the sky. When they passed Mako’s house, they both let themselves drop almost straight down, pulling out again just in time to skim the rooftop and land with a gust of wind. Juicy and Pepper groaned happily when they saw their Masters, and eagerly accepted the forehead rubs they both immediately received.

Both women quickly made their way downstairs to the kitchen and were greeted by the sight of Bolin standing on a chair, loudly and animatedly recreating the story of his first pro-bending match.

"The Fire Ferrets were untested! But just as it looked like we were gonna be knocked out of the ring - our firebender flagging, our waterbender in the water - Bolin comes from the left! He knocks the earthbender out of the ring! He distracts the waterbender long enough for Mako to knock out the firebender! And together, the brothers win the match!! _The Fire Ferrets go on to claim a championship-_ oh, hey sweetie! You’re home!"

Opal fought a smile at her husband’s antics. "I brought Master Jinora, too. Could you check on the girls and make sure they’re awake?"

Bolin jumped down from his chair and skipped over to kiss her on the cheek. "For you, my love, I would go to the ends of the earth! I would sail a thousand seas-"

"Bolin."

"Yeah, yep. I’m going."

Opal watched him go with a fond exasperation, but gestured for Jinora to take the lead once he was gone. She threw her robe over her shoulders and bowed her head to the two members of the White Lotus who were sitting at her table - looking very unsure of where they were and what was going on.

"Master Jinora," one of them said, trying to collect herself. "Good morning."

"Good morning, Mina. Harada."

Opal went to fetch tea while they talked. "We thought we might be able to see both claims today," Harada started.

Jinora raised an eyebrow. "Really? It took us nearly all of yesterday to _find_ the family, let alone talk to them." 

They winced even at the memory of the day before. Jinora too found herself reflecting briefly on the nightmare that was their investigation. They had spent almost four hours trying to track the claim - which had come via a scribbled letter, addressed simply to "Jenona" on Air Temple Island. There was no return address, only "Shi Zan, Hawthorne St". So after several hours on Hawthorne St, asking after a Mr. or Mrs. Zan, they finally located the family house, but nobody was home. Jinora was of the opinion that two airbender masters, two members of the White Lotus, and the brothers just sitting around on the steps was not very respectful or professional. So they spent the next hour wandering the nearby market, while Harada and Mina took turns watching the door.

Finally the father, Shi Zan, returned, but was very nervous to even be talking to airbenders. Jinora rolled her eyes just recalling what had happened next.

_"Is this your letter?" Jinora held the letter up._

_Mr. Zan fidgeted. "Erm. Yes."_

_"You said here that your son has been learning earthbending for a couple of years and that the other day he started waterbending. Can I meet him?"_

_"He is. Yes. That is, he does. He did." Mr. Zan wrung his hands. "I’ll - I’ll go call him, won’t I." Then he all but sprinted into the next room._

_Jinora turned to Mako. "Is it the way I’m dressed?"_

_Mako snorted. "I don’t think it has anything to do with you, or us." He turned to look out the window to check on his brother. Bolin and Opal had decided to stay outside with Harada, so as not to overwhelm the poor man._

_"I don’t know about you, Master Jinora, but I’m not feeling particularly hopeful about this one," Mina muttered._

_Jinora thought about making some remark about the power of a positive outlook, but she agreed, so kept quiet. And by the sounds of shuffling feet and hurried whispering, Mr. Zan had returned, this time with a sullen boy beside him._

_"This is Shiro," he said quickly, shoving the boy forward. "Tell them, Shiro."_

_"Hello, Shiro. My name is Jinora, and I’d very much like to see you bend, if you’re alright with showing me." She smiled as softly and welcoming as she could._

_Shiro glared at her. "You’re wasting your time, miss. My dad is being ridiculous."_

_Mr. Zan made a sound not unlike a dying bird. "Shiro! Show them!"_

_The boy rolled his eyes, but took a stance and made a punching movement. The floor rose to meet him, and he put it back with another movement._

_"That’s pretty good," Mako said, "but can you show us something with water?"_

_Shiro fell silent. Then, "I’m eleven, you know."_

_It took a second for Jinora to get it, but when she did, she took a deep breath and tried not to hang her head. "I see."_

_Mako frowned. "What?"_

_"Korra died nine years ago, Mako. The child can’t be older than nine."_

_"Oh… yeah." He scratched his head, suddenly confused. "Then what did your father see, Shiro?"_

_With a quick movement, Shiro reached out with one hand and a small spurt of water shot out. It was a little startling, but he quickly showed them how he’d done it, pulling down his sleeve to show them a small contraption with a balloon strapped to his forearm. "It was a stupid trick, but my dad freaked out and he sent that letter before I could explain that it was a prank."_

_Mr. Zan made a desperate choking sound that might have been a laugh. "I don’t suppose you can take him with you anyway?"_

"That was a disaster and a half," Mako summed up, rubbing his forehead.

Harada muttered an agreement. He was a young man, a talented waterbender who had joined the White Lotus instead of enlisting in the United Forces like his father had wanted. He was quiet and reserved, preferring to observe what went on around him. He’d been partnered with Mina because she was his perfect opposite: an outgoing firebender with a thirst for adventure and an optimistic attitude. Well, optimistic most of the time.

The duo had accompanied Jinora on most of her investigating missions for the last couple of years. They were a good team.

"So where are we going today?" she asked, trying to sound upbeat.

Harada unrolled the scroll he held in one hand. "The… Tai family, who say that their daughter Lia has been able to earthbend for the last year, and started lighting fires with her hands last month. She has also shown some proclivity for moving the water in the stream by their house."

"That sounds promising." 

Opal returned and handed out tea, which was gratefully accepted. Jinora all but inhaled hers - she made a mental note to ask where they got this incredible tea later. "How far away are they?"

Mako looked at the letter and grimaced. "The other side of the Middle Ring."

"Well, why don’t we take Pepper?" Jinora suggested. "The kids and Bolin might need Juicy for food transportation later, but we might as well expedite this."

Harada and Mina agreed somewhat reluctantly, for they weren’t big fans of bison flight, but followed the two airbenders and Mako up to the roof anyway. Pepper was already saddled and clearly a little grumpy. They’d flown the bison out for food last night, but had forgotten to buy extra apples, so her poor spoiled bison hadn’t had her favorite treat since yesterday.

"I know, girl," Jinora sighed. "I promise we’ll buy more apples today."

Pepper huffed, but let her master boost herself onto her neck. Opal then gave Mina and Harada a lift upwards, following them with a quick blast of air. Mako was tall enough to reach the edge of the saddle and hauled himself up, groaning about getting older and aching joints. Once they were all situated, Jinora nudged Pepper to keep moving forwards, but before they had even left the shelter, two figures burst out onto the roof.

"Mom!"

"MOM!"

Sayen grabbed her sister’s arm and used the other to launch both of them into the air with the aid of windpower. They nearly flattened Harada as they flew into the saddle, and only Opal’s intervention with her own bending kept them from continuing to fly off the other side. 

"What are you doing?" she asked, exasperated.

Kamaya opened her mouth but was interrupted by her twin. "We … wanted to say goodbye? And we love you?" Sayen said sweetly.

Opal scoffed, but pulled them both into a large hug anyway. "That’s sweet. Now what are you really doing out here? 

"Where’s your father?" Mako added.

The twins crossed their arms. "We told him we were saying goodbye. And we are."

"And?"

"And…" Kamaya hesitated. "We know that you decided we should stay, and we get it, but we think we’d be more help with you than just staying at home."

"Oh?"

"Well, we’re the same age as the Avatar, whoever it is. What if they don’t want to talk to you?" 

"Or what if you scare them away, or-"

"-you all get lost on the way, and need an extra couple of benders-"

Opal waved her hand. "Girls, I appreciate it. I really do. And I’ll tell you what: if you prove to your father that you’re capable of listening and being patient today, you can come with us tomorrow if we haven’t gotten to the last claim."

The twins flung their arms around her. "Thanks, Mom!"

"Love you!"

Then they jumped back to the ground, rubbing Pepper’s nose as they passed, squabbling the whole way about who was going to be the first to teach the new avatar.

"Bye Aunt Jinora, Uncle Mako! Bye Mom!"

Jinora laughed at them and pushed them gently away from Pepper’s massive paws with a swirl of air. "Pepper, yip yip!"

Once they were in the air, soaring over the rooftops, the master airbender turned to look at Opal. She was struggling to hold back laughter. "They’re cute, huh?"

"Oh, yeah. You have two little lawyers on your hands."

Opal snorted. "Spirits, I hope so. Better lawyers than pro-bending professionals."

Mina raised her eyebrows. "I didn’t know the twins were interested in pro-bending."

"It’s the bane of my existence." Opal sighed and smoothed her hair against the wind. "Pro-bending has calmed down a lot since I was a kid, but Republic City’s still got one of the biggest crowds for it. The girls think that as soon as they’re adults and they’ve trained their way into being masters, they’re going to lobby to let pro-bending teams include airbenders. Recently they’ve been devoting a lot of time to convincing their cousin he would be perfect as their firebender."

"I mean, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard," Mako said idly. "Pro-bending is a lot safer than it used to be since they introduced all those new rules about body armor. Plus, your girls are talented."

"I know. Again, it’s the bane of my existence."

They flew in silence most of the way, just enjoying the morning sun and the view of the whole city. Mako reopened the letter from the family and re read it several times. 

Eventually Harada inched closer to the front of the saddle, trying not to look over the side. "Er, Master Jinora? We’re almost there." He glanced downwards for a moment, turned a pale shade of green, and looked back quickly. "Past that pond, I think."

"Right. Down, Pepper!"

They circled lazily downwards, Jinora scanning the street signs as they got nearer to the ground. A couple people yelled and scattered, still not used to sky bison dropping out of the sky, but they found the Tai family residence quickly. 

As soon as they had all clambered down, Jinora led her bison over to a grassy patch on the side of the house where Pepper wouldn’t be in the way, and tugged at her robes and tunic to fix them. "How do I look?"

"Airbendy," Mako offered.

"Professional," Opal corrected him, re-tying her own cloak. 

The two airbenders led the way to the front door and knocked. It took a minute for someone to respond, but when it creaked open they were met with the sight of a little girl, no older than six. "Yeees?" she drawled.

"Hello there," Jinora said, putting on her friendliest face. "My name is Jinora. Does Lia Tai live here?"

"Lia’s my sister. Whaddaya want with her? Is she in trouble again?" The little girl looked overjoyed at this prospect.

"Er- no. Are your parents home? They sent us a letter about Lia, and we’d like to talk to them.

The girl rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Lia always gets the most attention." Then she turned and with what sounded like the lung capacity of an airbender, hollered, "MOOOOOOM!! DAAAAAAAAD!!"

A faraway voice answered, "FOR SPIRIT’S SAKE, KEEP IT DOWN! I’M COMING!"

Moments later a frazzled woman came stomping down the hallway, throwing on a housecoat, and froze when she saw the people on her doorstep.

"Hello," Jinora tried again, trying not to sound as awkward as she felt. "My name is Jinora, of Air Temple Island. You sent us a letter."

The woman tried to smooth her hair and tug the six year old away from the door at the same time. "Oh- yes- so pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m sorry about the mess, but why don’t you come on in?" She pushed the little girl into the nearest room, hissing instructions to be quiet and stay out of the way and _"watch your brother closely this time!"_

"My name is Iris, thank you for coming all this way. Shall I make tea?"

"We’re all right, thank you," Opal replied. "I’m Opal Beifong, and you’ve met Master Jinora. This is Mako, our friend, and Mina and Harada of the White Lotus."

Iris shook their hands nervously, ushering them towards the kitchen table, where they sat gratefully. "Well. I suppose you’re here to talk to Lia?"

"Yes." Jinora smiled. "We’d love to meet her. And if we could watch her bend, that would be excellent. Are you sure she’s the one?"

Iris worried her lip. "Yes. I think so. I’ve never met an Avatar before, you know."

"That’s perfectly alright. Is she here?"

Iris took a deep breath and demonstrated where the younger daughter had gotten her lungs from. "LIA!"

"WHAT?"

"COME IN HERE, PLEASE!"

"WHY??"

"ARE YOU TALKING BACK TO ME, YOUNG LADY?"

Another girl came stomping into the house, followed by a boy about her age and another boy who looked no older than twelve.

Iris motioned urgently for them to line up in the kitchen, then flashed her most convincing smile for their guests, who looked more uncomfortable by the minute. "This is Lia, and my son Lan." The older boy waved. "And this is their… friend. Niko."

Niko grinned. "Nice to meet you."

"What’s this about?" Lia grumped.

"It’s about your bending, sweetie. When you showed me that amazing trick last week, I sent a letter immediately to Air Temple Island. This is Master Jinora and Master Opal, and … friends."

Mako rolled his eyes inwardly. He’d gotten used to being his own person again, but every time he went on one of these claim investigations he was reminded of what it used to be like to be introduced as an afterthought. Whenever he traveled with Korra, this used to be a regular occurence.

Lia and her brother started to sweat visibly, but the younger boy - Niko - seemed nonchalant. "What about my bending?" Lia asked warily.

"Couldn’t you show them something, sweetie?"

"You should go outside," Niko suggested. Lan and Lia shot him dark looks, but the latter started to move for the doors. Jinora and Opal shared a significant, slightly despairing look, but followed them, Iris making nervous noises the whole way. 

Lia shakily adopted an earthbending stance and made a series of punching and kicking motions. The ground rose and obeyed her, if somewhat weakly. Jinora sidled up to Mako and breathed as surreptitiously as possible, "Watch the boys."

He moved his head a fraction of an inch and pretended to turn to ask Mina something, shifting his torso so he could watch the window out of the corner of his eye. Lan and Niko appeared to be having a furious, hushed argument, which ended abruptly when Lia stopped earthbending. Then Opal said, "That was nice. Could you show us some firebending?"

Lia nodded shortly and started to conjure flames, throwing them around. Mako noted with some surprise that she seemed better at this than the earthbending, which was highly unusual - an avatar’s strength tended to lie in their native element.

"And water?" Iris prompted, eyes filling with proud tears.

The girl hesitated, looking at the window before turning to the small stream behind their backyard. With increasingly shaky hands, she reached out and made a lifting motion, and a bubble of water lifted out of the pond. She released it quickly and spun to face the adults, still looking sweaty and nervous.

Mako had been watching the boys as subtly as he could, and when Jinora looked to him before speaking, he nodded his head in weary confirmation. The airbending master sighed.

"I’m sorry, Mrs. Tai, but I’m going to have to ask your son and his friend to come out here, please. Niko? Lan?"

The boys blanched and started to back up, but Lia interrupted them by bursting into tears."I’m-m-m s-sorry!" she sobbed. "It’s all my f-fault! I’m not the Avatar, I’m just a firebender."

Mako grimaced. He had suspected as much. The earth and water hadn’t responded to her movements like they would if she was the one controlling them, but her fire had been perfectly controlled. 

"Lan’s the earthbender. H-he didn’t want to be, Mom, so he tried to hide it from you, but th-then you saw him move rocks and I told you it was me. But then I started firebending and I didn’t w-wanna tell you wh-what had really happened, so we pretended I could do both." She cried harder. "A-and Niko found out he could waterbend, and he thought it would be funny if I pretended to do all three. We didn’t know you’d send a letter!"

Iris spluttered, face adopting approximately the same shade of red as a tomato, unable to formulate a sentence.

Jinora approached the girl and gently laid a hand on her shoulder. "Lia, it’s alright. It was nice to meet you anyway. That must have been really tough, lying to your mom like that. Have you learned a lesson about what happens when you try to lie your way out of something?"

Lia nodded shakily, still crying.

"My dad taught me the same lesson once. I tried to convince him that my little baby brother was an airbender because I’d broken a plate and thought it would be better if I blamed it on Meelo. Of course, I didn’t know that Meelo _was_ an airbender, he just couldn’t do it yet. So when my dad…" She continued to talk to the girl in soft tones, calming her down, while Opal comforted the embarassed Iris and Mako made his way back into the kitchen to talk to the boys.

"It was just a joke," Niko said defensively before the firebender could even open his mouth.

"I know, but it was also a lie. Lying can hurt." Mako looked sternly at both boys. Of the two, Lan looked far more sheepish. "Do I have your word you will never try to trick someone like this again?"

Lan nodded immediately, but Niko huffed and hunched his shoulders. "I will make no such promise."

Mako raised an eyebrow. "I see. You know, I know someone like you once. She was just as defiant to rules, and she loved to play pranks on people. But when her pranks hurt other people’s feelings, she always apologized." He sunk down into a crouch to be closer to their level. "Do you wanna know her name?"

Niko rolled his eyes, but Lan nodded again.

"It was Avatar Korra. She was a good friend of mine, you know."

Niko’s eyes widened. "Oh."

"I think you should apologize to Lia’s mother, and to Master Jinora."

"Ugh." He hesitated. "Okay." He slunk outside, Lan following closely behind him, and Mako watched proudly as they both mumbled heartfelt apologies.

After talking to Iris for another ten minutes, and deflecting her sputtered apologies and excuses and frequent curses towards her children, the group finally managed to back out of the house and rejoin Pepper. As soon as the front door closed, Jinora turned to Opal and said,

"Jaded, am I?"

They laughed. Opal rubbed Pepper’s face as they all started to climb into her saddle again. "I mean, that wasn’t as bad as yesterday. Pretty standard false claim."

"Does this really happen that often?" Mako asked. He’d only come to a couple of these investigations, and he knew that parents sometimes assumed the best of their children a little too blindly, but he didn’t know that there had been so many incidents like this. 

Jinora nodded ruefully, jumping onto the back of Pepper’s neck and taking the reins. "Kids think it’s funny to pretend they’re the Avatar. Every kid does it at some point, but some take it a little far. And there are always parents who are so excited at the prospect of having their kid as the Avatar that they send the letter without checking. We’ve even had parents like yesterday, who probably knew full well their kid was lying and sent it anyway. I don’t know what they think they’re gonna get out of it."

"You’ll find them, I know it," Opal said firmly, hoisting Harada upwards. "It won’t be long now. I have a good feeling."

There was a tense silence after that as Pepper took off again and everyone tried to convince themselves of the same.

"Alright, where’s the next claim?" Jinora finally asked. 

Mina unrolled the second letter and scanned it. "Uh… Bramble Street, off Market. Wow, that’s actually pretty close to your house, Master Mako."

Mako always felt a little uncomfortable when White Lotus members called him 'master,' but bent his head to look at the letter without commenting on it. "Yeah, that’s not too far at all. Actually… woah. I can’t read that handwriting at all."

"I know," Mina muttered, squinting at the parchment. "We were able to decipher the address and we got the gist of the letter, which says that … well, I’ll try and read it. Ahem. _’To whom-'_ at least I think that says to whom _'it may concern, I am reaching out to you to… address the matter of the newest Avatar. She is a young girl in need of help. Please… comment? No, sorry, collect her soon.'_ And then it just says 35 Bramble Street, Ba Sing Se."

"That’s horrifying. Like, that sounds so ominous. Why didn’t you investigate this one first?" Mako asked.

Jinora scoffed and mumbled something which made Mina blush, but the White Lotus guard answered anyway. "Master Jinora thought it was the most interesting one, but the White Lotus requires that we investigate every claim, and Masters Wei and Lao thought it would be prudent to contact actual families first."

"I didn’t think it was the most interesting! Alright, I did, but that’s not the reason I wanted to look at it first. I had a funny feeling about that letter."

"A good funny feeling?" Opal asked, excited.

Jinora just shrugged her shoulders. "I’m not sure. But it was more of a feeling than I got from the other two. Master Lao and Master Wei were right, though. We have to consider every family and we gave both of the ones we’ve seen so far equal consideration."

Pepper roared when she spotted Mako’s house and her littermate Juicy resting on the rooftop, but Jinora tugged on her reins lightly. "Sorry girl, one more house to go see! Then we’ll go home and I promise I’ll find you a whole bushel of apples."

The bison made a vaguely grumpy noise and complied, flying over Market and continuing a few blocks south until Mako spotted the Bramble sign. They touched down at the end of the street and Harada offered to stay with the bison, while the rest walked down the narrow alley.

"This part of town isn’t as nice, for the Middle Ring," Jinora muttered.

"I know. The house we have was all we could afford when we first moved here, but Pearl wants to move farther in. I think we should wait until Aiko goes to his new firebending academy so he won’t have to switch schools." Mako sighed and looked around at the outdated houses. "We’re trying our hardest to pass laws that will actually help the Lower Ring, but poverty seems like an incurable disease sometimes."

"There’s thirty five," Mina said, pointing forwards. 35 Bramble Street was even more rundown than its neighbors, with cracked windows and a patched-up roof. They knocked gingerly on the door and waited for several minutes with no answer.

Opal knocked again. "Hello?"

A very faint voice said something they couldn’t understand, so they knocked again. This time, louder, "Come in!"

Mako was unsettled. He didn’t like mysterious invitations into creepy old houses. Jinora and Opal, brave souls, pushed open the door like they were perfectly at home and started to look cautiously around the house. Mina followed Mako in, mumbling, "Don’t like the look of this. Nope. Not one bit."

They found their host in the kitchen, which smelled faintly of mouldy vegetables. It was a very old woman puttering around, filling cups with water and clearing the table. "Come in," she repeated, a friendly smile on her face. "Take some water, if you like."

The four adults stood awkwardly next to the table, looking at one another. Jinora stepped forward and started to say, "My name is Jinora of Air Temple Island. I-"

"I know who you are," the old lady interrupted. "I 'spect you’re here because of my letter. Well, I’m glad you found me, and I’m sorry about the mess. But I meant what I said." She set the last cup down and met Jinora’s gaze, watery green eyes meeting her suspicious brown ones. "I know who the Avatar is."

"Are you absolutely sure?" Opal crossed her arms, also unsettled by this strange encounter. "We’ve investigated a lot of claims, and all have been false."

The woman shook her head. "Absolutely sure."

"Well, miss- uh, what’s your name, miss?" Mako asked.

"Oh, I’ve got a name but nobody uses it." A wide smile stretched her cracked lips. "Most people 'round here just call me Nana Junebug."

"Miss… Nana Junebug. Is the Avatar related to you? Does she live here?"

"No, no." She waved a wrinkly hand. "No, poor thing lives on her own. I’ll tell you where if you let me explain the full story first. You’ll want to be sitting down for this."

They all reluctantly took a seat, and Jinora drank cautiously from her cup of water. It didn’t escape Nana Junebug’s notice that Mako watched her for a minute before drinking his own, but she decided not to comment. 

"It all started about seven or eight years ago, when this young woman named Hana moved in down by Circle Street, not that far from here. She had a little baby, a scrap of a thing really, and said that her boyfriend had left before the babe was born and left them in a tiny town near the Northern Sea…"

Nana Junebug told them the whole tale, about a young herbalist trying to make a life for her daughter, but not the baby’s name.

"And then a year ago, Hana stopped sending remedies around the neighborhood all together. Her daughter kept tellin’ everyone that her mama was too sick to keep makin’ em, but that she had all the recipes and she’d mix them up herself if she had the time." Nana Junebug let out a quavering sigh, and stared at the wall pensively. "But I knew the truth. Poor thing is lying about her mama still being there because she’s scared of leaving."

When she finally fell silent, Jinora said softly, "That’s all very sad, and I’m sorry to hear about it. But how do you know this girl is the Avatar?"

Nana Junebug leaned forward, making eye contact again. "That’s the thing, isn’t it? See, I was suspicious about how sick Hana really was towards the end. The girl works around town, so one day I let my nephew watch my fruit stand for me and I went to the house. Hana barely recognized me, she was so out of it, but I think she knew how close she was to leavin’. She grabbed me." To illustrate, she grabbed Jinora’s sleeve, but even though Mako and Mina startled she didn’t even flinch. 

"She said, ’Nana, you have to keep a secret. My daughter’s got a secret.’ I said, 'What kinda secret, honey?' She was real tired, but somehow she held my hand even tighter, and hauled herself up a little. ’Nana,' she said, 'I think my little girl is the Avatar. She bends rocks, she moves her bath water around above her head. She’s even started lighting fires in her hands.'" Nana Junebug shook her head sadly. "Hana didn’t say much more than that, but she asked me to look after the girl, and I promised her I would. Then I left before the little one got home. I’ve been tryin' to keep an eye on her like I said I would, but I’m starting to get the feeling my knees aren’t the only part of me that’s giving out." She let go of Jinora and sighed, sounding bone-deep tired. "I knew I had to let you know. Get that girl out of this Lower Ring. Give her a better life."

The four benders sat in stunned silence, taking in the tale. 

Finally Jinora managed, "Thank you for telling me. But… Nana, couldn’t you tell us where to find her? We need to get to her as soon as possible."

The old woman scrutinzed her for a long while, as if judging her on whether or not she was worthy of this secret. Eventually she apparently found what she was looking for.

"Ask your children. I saw them talking to her the other day, they know how to find her. Ask them to lead you to Tama."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nana junebug is the og spymaster. she knows all. nothing gets past her.
> 
> anyway i hope this makes sense? i feel like this came out kinda disjointed and i hope it wasn't as slow as it felt - i promise it will get more exciting next chapter! and yes, tama will be back next chapter :)


	6. The Avatar Returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After nine years, a search comes to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains subtle reference to grocery store chain Trader Joe's. i hope that doesn't drive anyone away.

Tama awoke with a start. She never remembered her dreams longer than a few moments after waking up, but she had a feeling that this one would leave a lasting impression. Rubbing her eyes furiously, she drew her knees to her chest and tried to slow her breathing, thinking hard about what she’d seen.

In her dream, she felt different. Her body felt taller, heavier, but more powerful. The details were escaping her, but she seemed to recall something about a city… not like Ba Sing Se, somewhere way more crowded and modern. She was running, and earthbending, conjuring up large walls of stone. There were people running away from her, and when she caught up to one and they tried to firebend at her, she batted it away like an insect. At one point it had even felt like the wind itself responded to her movements.

Tama furrowed her brows and studied her hands, thinking about the powers she hadn’t told anyone about. As was her custom right after waking up, she concentrated and made a tiny flame appear in her palm. Sometimes she would wake up thinking that her powers, her mother dying - all of it was one of her half-remembered dreams. She’d create a fire, or move the water from her drink the night before, or make the floor move.

It was always almost a disappointment when the powers were still there.

_"It wasn’t a dream, by the way."_

Tama jumped at the sound of the spirit who followed her around. "What- why are you always doing that?" she snapped, turning around to glare at the source of the noise.

Korra was standing in front of her kitchen counter, leaning against it with crossed arms and a nonplussed expression. _"Doing what?"_

"Showing up out of nowhere."

_"You have a stubborn mind. It makes it hard to talk to you in your dreams, so I have to come when you’re awake. But what you just experienced wasn’t a dream."_

"What do you mean, it wasn’t a dream? I was asleep, what else could it be?"

_"It was a memory. Specifically, my memory."_

Tama frowned. "That’s crazy. Why are you showing me your memories?"

Korra lifted an eyebrow and moved closer to the bed, studying the young girl before her. _"They’re our memories. Your memories from your last life, from my life."_

There was a long pause while Tama considered that. "I still think I’m just going crazy. I’m sick, right? Like my mom was."

_"No, you’re perfectly healthy. And I’m telling the truth."_

Her younger life scoffed. "Alright, sure. But I don’t believe you. People don’t have multiple lives, and normal people don’t bend more than one element. If I’m not sick, then I’m definitely a freak." She picked at her toes glumly.

Korra crouched down, her sad blue eyes even more serious than usual. _"You’re not a freak, Tama. And I don’t want to hear you call yourself that. You’re not a freak, you’re the Avatar."_

Tama blinked at her owlishly. "I … I thought that was just a story."

_"No, it’s real. And I’m the last Avatar. You’re the new me."_

She was still skeptical, and as callous about it as only a nine year old could be. "We don’t look anything alike. I can’t be you. I’m too short."

Korra laughed. _"You’re right, we do look pretty different. That’s because the Avatar is always born into a new body, and your body is perfect just the way it is."_ She considered her young charge for a moment, eyes suddenly sparkling with amusement. _"You know, the Avatar before me was a tall, bald man with a beard and tattoos."_

Tama’s face wrinkled in disgust. "He sounds weird. I like you better."

 _"Well, thank you."_ Korra searched her gaze. _"No matter what, I won’t leave you. Neither will your mom. Just because this is where her body is, doesn’t mean that her spirit is trapped here. You know I’ve talked to her a couple of times."_

"What?!" Tama bolted upright. "Can _I_ talk to her??"

 _"Not yet. I’m sorry. But I promise you she’s happy, and she misses you a lot."_ Korra reached out, but let her hand drop. _"She’s with you, no matter what. No matter where you go that will always be true."_

Tama’s lip trembled, and her eyes started to water. "Wh-what do you mean? Where am I going?"

Korra smiled sadly and started to fade. _"I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer. You are strong, Tama. Trust your friends. Trust the women with the arrows. They’re here to help you."_

The little girl lunged after her with a cry, but her spirit friend had already faded. She felt tempted to keep crying, but took several deep, shuddering breaths to calm herself down. Her eyes blinked quickly, trying to get rid of the tears, and she pinched herself hard. 

She took another ten minutes to breathe and pull herself together. At one point she pressed her feet against the floor and just sat there, breathing and feeling the earth, the goings on of the people outside her house. When she felt more collected, she glanced at the battered clock on her shelf and cursed.

"I have to be at work in five minutes," she muttered, racing to pull on her tunic and tie her hair back. "Stupid 'past life' distracting me. Stupid."

She ran as fast as she could to the nearest storefront on Circle Street, skidding to a stop at the side door and knocking furiously. Within moments it opened and the scowling face of her employer popped out.

"You’re late," Bara muttered.

"Sorry," she panted. "Where to?"

He huffed and crossed his arms. "Not so fast. This isn’t the first time you’ve been late in the last week, and you rarely show up for your afternoon shift on time. You findin’ some other job to occupy your time?"

Tama’s eyes widened. "S-sir. I thought my afternoon jobs were half-pay, and you didn’t give me times to show up for. I’ve been helping the other vendors around town."

"That’s a choice you made, then. You’re fine for now but you’re not off the hook." He sniffed. "Go to Market and Hawthorne, tell them we’re not setting out our stock of vegetables today. We’re focusing on canned food. If you know what’s good for you you’ll get there in the next five minutes."

She bit her lip to keep from retorting, dipped her head, and ran. She ran faster than she usually did for any of her errands. _Everything I do has to be punctual today. I can’t mess up._

As soon as she reached the next store and relayed her message, Tama gratefully accepted the break its manager gave her. The man who ran the Market and Hawthorne location was always nice to her, and sometimes gave her a cup of water or a minute to sit. While she sipped her water in the alley by the store, the young avatar reached down to remove her shoe so she could feel her surroundings. When her fingers hit skin it took her a minute to actually look at her feet and understand what was going on.

"I forgot shoes," she said out loud. She had left the house in such a hurry that the only things on her feet were the cloth bandages she kept tied around the middle, which protected the balls of her feet and nothing else. She’d run a whole day without shoes before, but it was midsummer and the roads were hot. Tama let her head fall back and hit the wall behind her, cursing quietly. Just another reason why this whole day was cursed.

"Time’s up, Tama. Sorry." The store manager was standing in front of her holding a large fabric sling with a large cardboard cylinder. She stood quickly and took it from him. "These are all the inventory records for the southeastern stores. Run it to the warehouse on Circle and Morrison."

"Gotcha." Tama handed him his cup and bowed. "I really appreciate this. Thank you." Then she took off again.

He watched her go with sad eyes. He always hated their policies of hiring kids and running them into the ground for cheap labor, but he wasn’t remotely important enough to the people running this business to have any say in it.

Tama ducked and weaved, dancing around the crowds. She had no way of knowing that the way she’d learned to move around every obstacle without breaking momentum actually closely resembled the moves necessary to learn airbending. However, as practiced as she was, sometimes when she pushed herself to go too quickly she ended up colliding with the people around her.

And either because fate was impatient or it had a sense of humor, she happened to collide with someone who was already looking for her. 

"Watch out- are you alright?"

Tama twisted away from them, eyes wide. "Sorry." She froze when she got a good look at who she was talking to.

It was a tall woman with brown hair and kind brown eyes. She was wearing peculiar orange and yellow robes, and between her bangs a bright blue arrow stood out glaringly on her pale forehead.

_The women with arrows._

In that instant, time seemed to slow down. Tama realized that she could either trust the advice of the weird spirit who haunted her every day, or run the risk that these women with arrows had been warned to look for her and would take her away if they knew who she was.

"Are you alright?" the woman asked again, but Tama barely processed her words. Her toes dug into the earth, feeling everyone and everything around her. She realized in a second that there were two more figures approaching, and that beyond them in the next street over, a massive figure lurked. If she concentrated on it, it almost felt - looked - like a bison.

"Sky bison," Tama choked out loud, without realizing it. The woman with the arrow frowned at this, but before she could do anything, the girl bolted.

She’d never run as fast in her life. Tearing down the street, sliding between people and leaping over small obstacles. At one point she sidestepped into an alley and with an uncharacteristically public display of her bending, stomped to create a small stone platform that launched her into a tall fire escape. _Lots of people can earthbend here,_ she thought to herself as she hurdled gaps in between buildings. _They won’t figure anything out just by looking for a girl who can earthbend._

When she felt that she was far enough away, she slammed a palm into the surface of the roof she was on and tried to figure out her bearings. It was harder being so far above the ground, but she recognized the street signs below, and was surprised to realize that she’d actually ended up pretty close to the store on Circle and Morrison. 

Tama took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. "I’m really losing it," she said plaintively. Without another beat, she jumped from the roof to the fire escape, and again to the ground. She straightened her tunic and slipped back into the crowd with the scrolls still tightly strapped to her back.

—

"This is so _not_ what I signed up for."

Sayen sighed and looked up when her twin plaintively crossed her arms. "I know. But at least we’re out here."

The twins and Aiko were sitting in Juicy’s saddle, idling the time away while their parents spread out in the marketplace. Harada was sitting at Juicy’s feet, making sure the kids didn’t try to run off. 

"It was our idea in the first place!" Kamaya exclaimed. "Fan out around some of the stores and wait for her to run by."

"I still can’t believe that Tama is the Avatar," Aiko mumbled for the fifth time in an hour, shaking his head. "She seemed so… ordinary."

Sayen added, "Grumpy. Don’t forget grumpy."

They sat in tense silence for another minute, sneaking glances down at Harada every so often. The White Lotus guard seemed happy to enjoy the company of the smelly bison, rubbing Juicy’s cheek and talking to him quietly. The twins looked at each other, sly grins growing slowly across their cheeks. Aiko noticed this and shook his head.

"It’s not gonna work," he hissed, exasperated by his cousins’ antics.

They stuck their tongues out in unison and started to creep down the side of the saddle that Harada wasn’t on. Kamaya’s toes were inches from the ground when a blast of air scooped her up and dumped her back in the saddle.

"Mom!" Sayen cried, grinning with only a tinge of guilt. "You’re back!"

Opal stood below them, scowling, her arms crossed. "And I see you two are as incorrigible as ever."

"Did you find her?" Kamaya asked excitedly, not at all concerned by how roughly she’d just been thrown back in the saddle. She nealy flatted Aiko when she rushed to look over the other side of the saddle.

Jinora appeared at Opal’s side, Mako and Bolin trudging behind her, Mina talking to someone a couple yards away. "Not exactly," the master airbender said.

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Aiko asked.

His father rubbed his forehead. "She nearly knocked Jinora over, but she ran off before we could talk to her."

The two airbenders boosted the brothers and the White Lotus guards into the saddle before following them, and Opal crossed her legs and looked her children in the eye. "Jinora didn’t even tell get her name. She didn’t even realize it was Tama at first until she thought about your description of her. Tama just said 'sky bison', like she knew Juicy was there even though he was on the other side of the block, and bolted."

Aiko frowned. "That’s what she freaked out about when we talked to her."

"She must be able to sense her surroundings!" Kamaya exclaimed after thinking for a moment. "What’s - what did Grandma call it? Seismic sense. Like what Great-Grandma Toph could do."

"That’s a really advanced earthbending technique," Bolin said, impressed. "But if she’s the Avatar, I’m not surprised."

"I just don’t understand why she’s so scared of the sky bison." Jinora glanced back at Juicy’s head. The bison was unconcerned with the antics of the humans on his back, and was contentedly chewing at some grass. "Who would be trying to scare her away from them?"

"Nana Junebug said her mother wanted to convince her that she shouldn’t show anyone her bending."

"But her mother’s gone, and there’s no reason she would have specifically warned her daughter to _look_ for a sky bison," Mako pointed out.

Silence fell as they all considered what to do next. Bolin whispered something to his brother, and they had a brief, silent conversation that went over the heads of everyone else.

"Care to share?" Jinora asked.

"Well," Bolin started, wincing. His brother took over. 

"We have an idea. You might not like it." Mako smoothed his hair subconsciously. "If we find one of the seedier stores Tama works at in the Lower Ring, I’m betting it would be pretty easy to bribe the storeowner into telling us where she might be, or when she’ll show up."

Jinora sighed. Ordinarily she wouldn’t condone stuff like bribery, but she was feeling a little desperate. After nine years of searching endlessly for the Avatar she had quite literally been run over by her - but Tama seemed determined to avoid being found. "Let’s do it."

Opal vaulted over the front of the saddle to sit between Juicy’s horns. "Yip yip!"

They kept closer to the ground than they usually would, soaring over the dilapidated buildings of the Lower Ring and looking for the unmistakeably large storefronts that only ever belonged to the business Tama worked for. "Did anyone ever bother to learn the name of this chain of stores?" Bolin shouted over the wind.

Kamaya and Sayen frowned, realizing suddenly that it had never occured to them to look. Thankfully their cousin had, as always, paid more attention than them.

"It’s called Trader Coal’s," Aiko replied loudly.

"Thanks!"

They spotted a Trader Coal’s store not long after, and when Mako and Bolin both looked at it and deemed it as seedy as one can get, Opal guided Juicy to an open plaza a ways away. "This way Tama won’t see Juicy first and get spooked," she explained as they all climbed down. Then she quietly instructed her bison to leave and go find some food back home, and that she’d call for him when they were done. He grumbled and took off with a slap of his tail.

As the group wandered back towards the store, Mako coached them all quietly on staying out of the way and making sure they didn’t startle anyone. Already the presence of so many finely-dressed strangers, not to mention strangers who had just flown in on a sky bison, was causing people to point and whisper. Jinora and Opal drew their conspicuous orange and yellow robes tighter around themselves. 

Bolin considered the group. He and Mako weren’t wearing their nicest clothes, per say, but they weren’t quite blending in. Ironically the three kids looked the most "Lower Ring" of all of them, since they were all clad in their dirty training tunics. "Mako, we should take the kids. Everyone else might have to wait outside," he said.

Mako considered the twins and his son, and nodded. "He’s right. You four should find a place to hide while we talk to the storeowner, or we might scare her off."

Jinora reluctantly agreed, and she and the others found a garment store they could browse and stand behind the shelves of. Mako led the others into the store. 

"Excuse me," Bolin greeted the man at the counter. "We’re looking to speak to the owner."

The man chuckled and looked them all up and down skeptically. "Is that right? What for?"

Mako stepped in smoothly and placed a gold coin on the counter. "We have a couple of questions to ask him."

"I see." The man considered this, then took the coin and nodded to them. "Alright, I’ll get him."

The brothers conversed impatiently while they waited, keeping a wary eye on the three children. They were displaying a great deal more patience than usual, standing idly a couple feet away and acting the part of bored children being dragged on an errand. The two fathers could still tell how anxious they were.

"Gentlemen," a smooth voice said. Mako and Bolin looked up to see a man with a smart tunic and a straggly goatee. "Tyo tells me you have some questions for me."

"That we do," Mako replied. "We’re looking for someone. A girl who works for you - name’s Tama."

The storeowner tensed - he seemed to recognize them somewhat. "What about her?"

Bolin shrugged and slid another gold coin onto the counter. "Nothing serious, we just need to ask her something."

"Uh huh." He eyed the coin greedily. "Doesn’t ring a bell, though. Can you tell me anything else about her?"

"About yea high." Bolin gestured. "Dark hair, ponytail, braids. She runs errands between your stores." Then, after a pause, he added two more coins to the counter. 

The storeowner grinned. "Alright, I know her. She’s due back here in another hour. It’s usually pretty random where they send her, but sometimes there’s a schedule to things, and we need an inventory delivered round then." Then he slid the coins swiftly into his hand and moved away from the counter.

"Thank you."

"Pleasure doing business."

Mako and Bolin ushered their kids out of the store.

"What’s the plan, Dad?" Sayen whispered.

"We’ll wait the hour, maybe find somewhere to eat." Bolin caught sight of a crèpe cart and nearly started salivating. "Let’s find your mother and get some brunch!"

Mako rolled his eyes. "I’ll wait here. You go get the others."

"You want anything?"

The firebender wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t a fan of sugary things, or breakfast food in general. "I’m good."

Bolin shook his head and sighed melodramatically while he ushered the children away. "Aiko, have I ever told you that your dad is a boring stiff with no taste in food?"

"Uh, yeah, Uncle Bo. A lot of times."

Aiko shot an apologetic glance at his father over his shoulder, but Mako laughed and waved him off, settling against a wall to wait. Sharp golden eyes watched the crowds that milled around the streets, flicking towards his family every so often while they enjoyed their crèpes by a fountain. They were far enough away that hopefully Tama wouldn’t notice them.

The hour crept by slowly for the experienced firebender. He found himself drawn into old memories of when he was a police officer in Republic City. He’d taken part in many a stakeout in those days, and they were one of the more enjoyable parts of the job. Mako had loved being a cop, but as he got older and he watched his friends settle down and move away, it had been hard being the only person left from Team Avatar that really lived in the city. Bolin had moved to Zao Fu to be with Opal only a year or two after the Kuvira debacle, and Asami had traveled with Korra in the Spirit World for almost the same amount of time. When they returned, it was as if she had lost the ability to settle in one place. The young CEO started spending her time all over the world, establishing and expanding Future Industries.

And Korra… well. She technically lived on Air Temple Island when she wasn’t in the Spirit World, but preferred to be wherever Asami was. Then the Earth Nation started to have problems again when their newly elected council system proved to be inadequate, so the Avatar had spent a lot of time trying to re-establish peace.

Throughout all of this Mako stayed in Republic City. He enjoyed his life there, and tried to convince himself that it was still where he was meant to be, that even though none of his friends were around it was the life he wanted. All of it had changed when he met Pearl.

She was a non-bender from the Earth Nation, who was studying in an advanced graduate program from the University of Ba Sing Se at the time. They met when a café where she was studying was robbed by Triad firebenders, and Mako had been one of the officers responding to the scene. He remembered trying to get the civilians out, most of them screaming and panicking, and being confronted by a stubborn young woman with singed hair. 

"You need to get out of here now, ma’am!" he’d shouted.

The woman was still sitting at her table, a folder and a notebook clasped tightly to her chest while she scrabbled with one hand to pick up loose papers. "I’m not leaving without my research," she’d huffed.

Mako smirked when he recalled his barely-restrained anger. "The building is on fire, ma’am, and you really need to get out!"

She had given him a withering glare. "You could help me pick these up, then."

And that was that, really. After the blaze had been put out and the criminals apprehended, he’d stumbled towards his car, covered in ash and soot and ready to go home and crash. She’d been standing on the curb, folder barely held together under one arm, furiously scribbling in her notebook. The apartment she was staying in was above the café and they’d shut down the whole building while they tried to put out the fire. Mako had offered her his couch and she’d accepted almost without looking up from her writing.

The next day he asked her if she wanted coffee, and spent the next couple of months falling hard. Pearl was wicked smart, determined, and bullheaded. She wanted to become a politician and had all of the people skills and deviousness to do it. And as much as she frustrated him, Mako came to realize he could easily see himself being happily exasperated with her for the rest of his life. He was happy. 

Although there _was_ the embarassing moment he introduced her to Korra and Asami and watched as everyone around the table realized that he had such a blatant type.

They’d married not long after, and were struggling to figure out whether to stay in Mako’s apartment in Republic City or move to Ba Sing Se. He thought he still wanted to be a cop, but was starting to grow weary of the long hours, and Pearl wanted to work and campaign there. When she got pregnant, and they had Aiko, it was clear that staying on the force for much longer wasn’t feasible.

Mako’s unfocused gaze rested on a small family across the road, the mother cradling an infant and the father showing his son a small toy. A sad smile played across his lips. Pearl had always wanted another child, but Aiko’s pregnancy was so tough on her that every healer they saw recommended against it. 

Then Korra died, and Mako quit his job a month later. Staying in Republic City was more than impractical then. They’d bought their modest house in the Middle Ringa and he left his hometown for good. Voices brought him out of this reverie.

"Tama. You’re early."

"Sir, the inventory reports from Morrison, Salmon and Cedar."

Mako’s head snapped around and he cursed his daydreaming. Tama had appeared at the side entrance of the store without him noticing! But she seemed fairly absorbed in the scrolls she was giving to the storeowner he’d bribed, and the instructions he was giving her. Mako just wasn’t sure how he could get Bolin’s attention. He tried to make eye contact with one of them and keep an eye on Tama at the same time - thank the Spirits that Jinora happened to glance his way and notice his subtle hand gestures. He motioned that they should stay back while he talked to her, and Jinora nodded.

The firebender stood and started to meander towards the girl, pretending to peruse the store windows. She noticed but didn’t appear to recognize him, and continued talking in hushed tones to the storeowner, who was avoiding Mako’s gaze.

Then Bolin came around the corner and said, "There you are, Mako! I was looking for you."

"I got lost," Mako replied apologetically. He looked around and pretended to notice Tama and the storeowner for the first time. "Oh! Sir - do you think you could give my brother and I directions back to the Hawthorne Market?"

Tama eyed them suspiciously, but the storeowner pushed her forwards with a pat on the shoulder. "Tama here knows all the streets in this city. Why don’tcha ask her?"

"Sir," she hissed, but he was already going back into the store, and she followed the brothers reluctantly.

"Hello, Tama!" Bolin said cheerfully. "Thanks so much for this. My knucklehead brother swore up and down that he knew where he was going, but I knew he was full of it. I’m just visiting Ba Sing Se, you see. Wanted to get the full tour of my big bro’s happy home!"

Tama made a face when he wasn’t looking, but Mako noticed and stifled his laughter. "Ignore Bolin, kid. If you could get me to Market Street I’m sure I’ll find my way from there."

She scanned the streets as they walked. "Uh… okay. It’s not that far."

The brothers tried to subtly observe their unsuspecting guide as they walked, finding it hard to conceal their emotions all of a sudden. If they were right, and she was the Avatar, this was the spirit of one of their greatest friends in a stranger’s body. They wondered if she recognized them on a subconscious level. Judging by how uncomfortable she was even talking to them, Mako guessed she had no such feelings.

"That crèpe stand looks incredible," Bolin gushed as they passed it, trying to initiate a conversation. "Have you ever tried them, Tama?"

The girl shrugged. "Can’t afford fancy food like that, sir."

"Please, call me Bolin."

"… Bolin." She frowned. "I know that name from somewhere."

Mako jumped at that golden chance. "We used to be pretty well known - we traveled the world trying to help people."

Tama grimaced. "Then what are you doing here in the Lower Ring? Why would you show your brother this stinking place instead of hanging out with rich people?"

The brothers looked askance at one another. "Well… you know, Bolin and I were actually raised on the streets. Our parents died when we were young. We lived in Republic City, though, but we used to have family in this part of Ba Sing Se."

"Huh." Tama’s interest seemed peaked. "Wh- how did you end up traveling the world?"

"First we were pro-benders!" Bolin pulled a bit of earth from the ground to show off, then put it back, and elbowed Mako until he produced a small flame on a fingertip. Tama’s eyes widened at that.

"I’ve heard of that," she muttered, trying to conceal her excitement and failing. Mako was almost sad when he recognized what she was doing: trying to seem more grown up than she really was.

"Do you wanna be a pro-bender someday? We still know some people in the business."

Immediately she shut down again. "Can’t bend. Wouldn’t do you any good."

Mako switched topics. "Anyway. We were pro-benders for a while, but it all changed when we met Avatar Korra."

She stiffened. "Who?"

"Avatar Korra!" Bolin exclaimed, flabbergasted. "You know the last Avatar was Korra, right?"

"I’ve heard that name," Tama almost whispered, eyes darting this way and that. She seemed about ready to bolt - Mako wondered why she hadn’t yet. He also knew that they were approaching Market Street, and had just caught a flash of yellow robes out of the corner of his eye - Jinora and the others were still following them.

"Hey, is that it?" he said, pointing at the street sign and feigning surprise.

Tama jerked her head yes, and started to inch away. "Yeah. That’s Market. I gotta go."

"Wait! Let us buy you some choco milk or something," Bolin said.

Tama wasn’t looking at him, though, staring instead at something just to his left. She shook her head and glared like she was arguing with someone invisible.

"Are you alright?" Mako was starting to grow truly concerned.

"Fine," she snapped, still staring at the invisible person. But instead of running off, Tama hesitated, still listening to something the rest of them couldn’t hear. "Is-" she started falteringly. "Is it true that you and Korra were good friends?"

The brothers both raised their eyebrows at that. "Yes," Mako said quietly. "We were close."

Tama backed slowly towards a secluded alley, and they followed her warily. "Did you trust her?" she whispered.

Bolin replied instantly. "With our lives."

The girl’s face started to crumple, like she was ready to cry. "You’ll think I’m crazy."

"We promise we won’t," Mako said softly.

There was a long pause while Tama took deep, shuddering breaths, and sniffled once or twice. Then, "A couple days ago, a spirit lady started talking to me."

They nodded, waiting patiently for her to continue while she thought about it, no longer glancing at something invisible. She blinked rapidly and made eye contact with Mako again. "She said that she had to talk to me and that- … that I could trust her." Her voice became even quieter, and the brothers leaned forward to hear her. 

They thought briefly, with bated breaths, that they already knew what she was going to say.

"She said her name was Korra," Tama choked, looking at her feet. "She said I had to find the sky bison, and the women with arrows. But I didn’t want to. I thought they would take me away, like my momma said they would." Her eyes flicked upwards, resting in between the brothers. "She says I can trust you though. She asked me to tell you about her."

Mako felt like the air had left his lungs, and resisted the urge to look at the empty air beside him. "Is she here now?" he breathed.

Tama nodded.

Bolin found himself also choking back tears. "Tama, you can trust us," he said emphatically. "We don’t want to take you away, we just want to help you."

Her lip trembled while she considered this, and whatever else Korra’s spirit must have been saying. "You brought the women with arrows with you, didn’t you?"

"Well, I’m married to one of them, so yes- ow!" Bolin massaged his arm where Mako had hit him, and for the first time a smile tugged at Tama’s lips.

"They would love to meet you," Mako said. "Would it be alright if we bring you somewhere else to talk? This alley isn’t the coziest place."

Tama kept chewing her lip. "I have to work. If I don’t- if I don’t show up at the next store-"

"We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it," Bolin interrupted. "You look hungry, anyway. Let’s buy you lunch."

Another long pause. "Okay," she sighed. As they walked with her out of the alley, Bolin guided them towards a small park with food stands, she said quietly: "I hope you’re not disappointed."

"Why would we be disappointed?"

She scuffed the ground with one foot while she walked. "Korra looked so strong, she’s- I’m sure she was an amazing Avatar. I don’t know anything about being an Avatar." Picking at her braids, she said glumly, "I don’t think I’ll be very good at it."

"Let me tell you a secret, Tama," Bolin started with a grin. "Korra wasn’t very good at it at your age, either. She broke rules, got into trouble - she took forever to figure out airbending. And she was a lot older than you when we met her."

"Really?"

Mako smiled, recalling some of the stupid things they’d done together. "Yeah, really."

They rounded the corner and Tama stopped in her tracks when she saw the rest of the group. Jinora and Opal were talking quietly with the White Lotus guards, while the twins wrestled each other and Aiko tried to pretend he wasn’t related to them. Jinora spotted them, a bright smile lighting up her face when she saw Tama.

"It is an honor to meet you, Tama," she said, approaching them. "My name is Jinora."

"Hi, Jinora," she replied shyly. "I'm sorry I ran away from you earlier."

"There's no need to be sorry. I should watch where I'm going."

Opal introduced herself, as well as Mina and Harada, and the twins stopped shoving each other’s heads in the dirt long enough for them to realize who had come to join them.

"Hi, Tama," Aiko said.

"Tama!" Kamaya cried, releasing her sister’s legs from the rocks she’d imprisoned them with. "Tama!" Sayen echoed immediately after, knocking her sister’s feet out from under her. 

_"Girls-"_

Tama wasn’t sure what to think of the three kids, but she waved hesitantly anyway before turning back to Jinora. "Korra told me I could trust the women with the arrows," she confided.

Jinora’s eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t ask the million questions she was clearly thinking. "Korra is telling the truth. And I hope you’ll learn to trust me, because we’ll be spending a lot of time together." She knelt down and bowed her head to the girl.

The Avatar returned the bow hesitantly. "What- what am I supposed to do?"

"For you to truly become the Avatar, you will have to master the four elements. It might take a long time." Jinora searched her gaze. "I know you don’t want to leave Ba Sing Se, but we were hoping to start your training as soon as possible. Is that alright?"

"My momma thought I might leave, if I told anyone about my bending." Tama sniffled. "But I don’t like living here anymore. I don’t like hiding. A-and… I don’t think I like being alone."

Jinora swept her into a hug. "You don’t have to live here. We won’t leave today, we can go to your house and get your things. But you don’t have to be alone anymore."

It had been a long time since Tama had been hugged, so she squeezed back somewhat uncertainly. Something inside of her felt whole. The women with arrows weren’t as scary as she thought, and even though she was scared of trusting people she’d only just met, she felt like she’d known them for a long time.

She even thought she heard a faint voice in her head, but it didn’t sound like Korra, or anyone else she’d ever met. The voice just said quietly, _You will be alright. Your mother would want you to be happy._

Tama trusted the voice. Many years later, she would remember that moment and realize that the voice had a name and a history, but on that summer’s day in an empty park she just hugged a master airbender and cried.

—

Unbeknownst to all of them, even Tama, two ghostly figures were watching them.

"Thank Raava she believed me," one of them muttered, a Water Tribe woman who watched Tama like an anxious parent.

The man beside her chuckled, resting a tattooed hand on her shoulder. "She’s smart. Far more wise, I think, than either of us were at that age." He was bald, and wore orange and yellow robes similar to the two living women before them.

"I have a hard time imagining you as a little monk child."

He laughed. "Katara would no doubt love for me to show you her memories of what I was like when she first met me."

There was an easy silence. Most human spirits, once they’d passed on, never left the Spirit World, spending all of eternity in their dreams. But former Avatars were another matter.

"I don’t suppose you’ll ever be able to speak to her," Korra said, a question she already knew the answer to. Aang shook his head.

"Vaatu severed the Living Avatar’s connection with me, and the others before me." His sharp gray eyes turned to look at his companion. "But perhaps through you, we could still offer our wisdom. You may be starting a new cycle, but every new Avatar will eventually meet us once they pass on."

Korra nodded. "That’s… that’ll work."

Aang appraised their newest reincarnation again, eyes lingering proudly on his granddaughter before flicking back to the girl. "I’m not worried. Tama has a great destiny before her."

They shimmered and vanished, returning to the Spirit World, while their new life began in earnest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes this took a long time. i kept hitting roadblocks with this chapter - sorry it's up so late. but whoopee there it is!
> 
> tama is really just a scared nine year old girl, so sometimes she freaks out and then takes a minute to make up her mind about something.
> 
> the last bit is my wishful thinking. i was so mad that korra lost contact with all the avatars, and i wanted to touch upon the fact that that connection is still lost for all the avatars after her. but i headcanon that once you're actually dead and in the spirit world, you can talk to all the dead spirits you like, and the former avatars are still just as invested in their futures. also i just love aang a lot, so. 
> 
> i would LOVE some feedback on something, though: i've written what could potentially be the next chapter, but there is a bit of a time skip. would you rather skip to a point after Tama starts her training, or pick up a little after we left off with a goodbye to ba sing se? let me know what you'd like to see ;)
> 
> as always, i hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading this far!


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